Can the "chill" of home appliance market continue to bring about inflection points
On December 14, the statistics of a number of third-party home appliances, including Ovi Cloud, were released. Despite the stimulus of the "Double 11" promotion, the situation of home appliance shipments was still not optimistic from the data of previous years. Experts pointed out that from the general background, the market tends to be saturated, and the demand side is difficult to improve significantly. However, driven by the demand for real estate home decoration, the shipment of household appliances will not fail to usher in a small spring, which is also an opportunity for further promotion of packaged household appliances.
Limited incremental demand
From the specific data, the online retail sales of color TV sets in November were - 22.2% YoY; The average price was 2546 yuan, down 9.4% year on year; Among all categories of white electricity, the online retail sales of refrigerators, freezers, washing machines, independent dryers and air conditioners were - 12.8%, 2.4%, - 18.8%, 68.1% and 5% year on year respectively; Among the main categories of kitchen and bathroom, the online retail sales of range hoods, gas stoves, dishwashers, integrated stoves, electric heating and heating were - 17.8%, - 24.4%, - 18.3%, - 33.4%, - 3.6% and - 17.1% year on year respectively.
For the offline market, the decline in shipments is also the main theme. In November, the offline retail sales of refrigerators, freezers, washing machines, independent clothes dryers and air conditioners were - 32.1%, - 27.6%, - 40.8%, - 16.1% and - 35.8%, respectively, year on year; Among the main categories of kitchen and bathroom, the offline retail sales of range hoods, gas stoves, dishwashers, integrated stoves, electric heating and heating were - 35.8%, - 37.7%, - 20%, - 23%, - 44.3% and - 43.3% year on year respectively.
In this regard, Liang Zhenpeng, a senior industrial economic observer, pointed out that the current home appliance market lacks the endogenous power to drive the shipment to scale. From the perspective of products, new home appliances are growing fast, but the scale is relatively small. It focuses on the segmentation of demand and niche markets, which can hardly significantly boost the overall home appliance market. From the demand side, the demand for replacement has become the mainstream. This demand is fragmented, and can not focus on driving the growth of home appliances.
The data also confirms this point. According to the statistics of the National Development and Reform Commission, at present, China has more than 2.1 billion electric refrigerators, 117.7 air conditioners per 100 households, and 540 million air conditioners in the country. The market has been fully saturated, and the designated refrigerator market came earlier. In 2017, 98 refrigerators were owned by 100 urban residents and 92 refrigerators were owned by 100 rural residents.
Seize the opportunity of home decoration
As for whether the downturn in shipments will become the norm in the field of home appliances, Hong Shibin, an industry observer, believes that for the entire market, the grand occasion of soaring before 2010 is really hard to come. However, affected by the cycle and external conditions, the home appliance market is not unable to usher in a turning point. In the foreseeable future, if the real estate market recovers, it will also be a great benefit for home appliances.
Experts pointed out that the demand for home decoration driven by real estate is an important driving force for the shipment of household appliances. If the timeline is extended, we can see that since 2008, the household appliances sector has experienced four relatively obvious upward cycles. The first round is mainly due to the industrial policy stimulus, resulting in a large increase in the ownership. The last three rounds are related to the stability and recovery of household appliance market demand after real estate and credit easing. Now, with the optimization of epidemic prevention policies, The domestic market is expected to recover from the pre epidemic situation.
From the data point of view, according to the statistics of Ovi Cloud, up to now, 3162 projects and 2.77 million sets of hardbound houses are planned to be delivered in the refined decoration projects, of which 1056 projects are in the new first tier cities, accounting for 32%; Second tier cities, with 961 projects, account for 30% of the refined decoration units. It is expected that 2023 will usher in a wave of house delivery, which will greatly benefit the home appliance market.
However, Liang Zhenpeng said that the stimulation of the real estate market can not be simply seen as an opportunity for the shipment of household appliances. Enterprises should see more opportunities for the development of integrated household appliances. From the current situation, the whole set of household appliances is highly functionally related. For example, all household appliances can be operated by installing special apps on mobile phones, but the scenario is still not prominent. Next, household appliances are not only connected point-to-point, It is a scene based experience, and various household appliances can provide ecological services under various life scenarios.
The experts emphasized that the promotion of packaged home appliances should pay more attention to consumer experience, and customers' feelings will directly determine their purchase intentions. For enterprises, offline outlets can be transformed into experience stores, so that stores can fully play the role of drainage. In the context of integration, customer stickiness and repurchase rate will be greatly improved, and enterprises that get ahead of others will enjoy long-term dividends.
