Silver Silk Road

In the past decade, we have witnessed a dramatic growth in online retailing and electronic commerce (e-commerce). E-commerce, in a broad sense, has brought about a revolution in business practices. Through e-commerce, many businesses have been able to increase profitability, gain market share and improve customer service. However, with the rapid evolution of globalization, demographics and information technologies, customer requirements and consumption patterns are also changing. Faced with this situation, established e-commerce firms have to adapt rapidly.

 This research proposes the next generation of e-commerce, termed ubiquitous commerce (U-Commerce), to provide more convenient and personalized products/services for customers, especially the elderly. By integrating personalized contextual insights and age-friendly interactive shopping experience into existing e-commerce platforms, U-Commerce offers a human-centric electronic business environment that is based on large-scale distributed computing and wireless communications capabilities. U-Commerce operates on multiple device platforms to improve access for the elderly and makes available a wide range of products/services regardless of physical location. The project will focus on: 

• developing a new framework for assessing retail commerce performance in a human-centered way;
• interpreting user actions with contextual insights;
• enriching customer experience, both online and offline.

The research lab is established in partnership with the Shandong Commercial (Lushang) Group.