1 An Ethnographic Approach towards Understanding the Food Shopping Experience of the Elderly Consumer

The elderly consumer has become more attractive to food retailers as they have a higher disposable income and set aside a larger budget for their groceries. From the literature review, it was found that very little studies have focused on their retail needs and research in the United Kingdom is limited. In addition, previous studies adopt a quantitative approach through surveys or questionnaires and the results may not be a true account of the current scenario. The aim of this research is to investigate the current difficulties and challenges associated with supermarket food shopping among senior consumers in the United Kingdom so as to improve retail service design for this group of consumers. A qualitative ethnographic approach, that combines direct observations and semi-structured interviews, was employed to discover ageing consumers ’ natural supermarket shopping behaviours and their attitude and satisfactions of the current service from supermarket retailers. Aspects such as the use of trolleys and baskets; store layout and aisles; shelves and freezers; products; customer service; and the checkout experience were investigated. In this project, 14 elderly participants were invited and asked to undertake their usual shopping, followed by the task of finding and identifying 3 items at 2 different supermarket retailers. The purpose of the 3 items was to serve as a benchmark of issues that the participants faced at both stores. A box of icing sugar wa