Exploring invisibility in Chinas 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.