Exploring ʻinvisibilityʼ in Chinaʼs Digital Economy

Access to products and services is increasingly 'digital by default'.
Non-users of digital channels have no direct means of signalling
preferences through consumption, rendering them effectively
invisible to designers of future products and at risk of permanent
exclusion. We explore this in China by sampling millions of
consumer’s records across digital and non-digital channels.
Separating consumers into digital/non-digital user groups allows
the characteristics of those at risk of ‘digital exclusion’ to be
predicted. From a corporate perspective, this scale of analysis
allows strategic models of economic development in China based
on both City Tier and McKinsey’s City Cluster to be tested, and
delivers ‘at risk’ groups that are large enough to provide economic
incentives for inclusion. Non-use may, however, be elective, with
consequences for the effectiveness with which governments
formulate and target ‘digital inclusion’ policies. Hence we also
explore how elective non-users might be distinguished from the
potentially excluded.