The policy is favorable, and the trend of household appliance market is constantly changing

After experiencing the pressure and low period in 2022, the Chinese household appliance industry is showing signs of recovery in the beginning of 2023 with policy support.

The Outline of the Strategic Plan for Expanding Domestic Demand (2022-2035) issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council proposed "to promote the consumption of home decoration, increase the consumption of smart appliances, and promote the development of digital homes". At the regular press conference of the Ministry of Commerce held on December 29, 2022, press spokesman Shu Jueting said that the Ministry of Commerce would actively take measures together with relevant departments to restore and expand consumption, and constantly enhance the fundamental role of consumption in economic development, which clearly proposed to promote household appliances consumption, promote green smart appliances to the countryside and replace the old with the new. This also brings opportunities for the home appliance industry to seize the opportunity to carry out industrial upgrading.

The interviewed experts believe that with the continuous improvement of the recent policy, the real estate industry will usher in an inflection point, the domestic demand for home decoration is still very strong, and the household appliance industry is expected to usher in spring.

Signs of recovery in the home appliance market began to appear

When the Central Economic Work Conference in 2022 deployed the tasks of economic work in 2023, it put "efforts to expand domestic demand" in the first place, and particularly stressed "the priority of restoring and expanding consumption". As an important part of household consumption, household appliance consumption is also an important means to expand domestic demand.

Everything is new in the New Year. As the Spring Festival approaches, every household has to replace some new home appliances, and the home appliance market has also ushered in the sales season. When the reporter visited an offline physical store in Suning, Beijing, he saw that almost all household appliances were labeled with promotional discounts, and there were also full reduction activities superimposed on them. The store customers were in an endless stream.

Mr. Yan, who is purchasing household appliances in the store, told the reporter: "After the further optimization of epidemic prevention and control measures, the decoration of our new house has finally been put on the agenda. Recently, my wife and I have been selecting goods in major home appliance stores. In addition to refrigerators, televisions, washing machines, we also consider purchasing some smart appliances such as dishwashers, integrated ovens, sweepers, etc."

The reporter noted that in order to seize the opportunity of the festival and boost consumption, home appliance enterprises have launched various new year promotional activities in succession: at the end of 2022, the annual Changhong Meiling Spring Festival Festival again opened, and the activities span the three nodes of New Year's Day, Spring Festival and Lantern Festival, which lasted from late December 2022 to early February 2023; At the end of 2022, Siemens Home Appliances worked with JD.com to create a super brand day for the first time, and launched the shopping carnival of smart home appliances online and offline simultaneously.

At the same time, major e-commerce platforms also launched promotional activities such as "New Year's Rejuvenation" and "Smart Tide Day" for household appliances, with considerable sales. For example, JD Home Appliances announced that from December 26, 2022 to February 26, 2023, JD will cooperate with all major electrical brand manufacturers to create daily preferential and weekly themed consumer activities during the Double Festival, so as to boost the vitality of the home appliance consumer market.

Many institutions generally believe that the recovery of household appliance consumption is the general trend. In the near future, the policy side has continued to be positive. The recovery of the real estate policy and the implementation of the Strategic Plan for Expanding Domestic Demand are expected to improve the terminal demand of the household appliance industry and boost market confidence.

High-end appliances continue to release growth potential

"Under the dual pressure of the impact of the epidemic and the uncertainty of the global economic recovery, the production, circulation and consumption of the household appliance industry will be impacted to a certain extent in 2022, and the consumption growth of traditional household appliance products will slow down. In contrast, the emerging household appliance categories such as fresh air air conditioners, clothes dryers, dishwashers, floor washers, self-cleaning floor sweepers, integrated cookers, etc. will be welcomed by consumers and become new growth points and market vitality. At the same time, it is worth noting that the demand for renewal and consumption upgrading are not decreasing, and the medium-high end products of frequency conversion, energy saving, intelligence, large capacity and other types are still growing rapidly, bringing more opportunities for the high-quality development of the household appliance industry. " Tao Xiaonian, president of the China Home Appliances Association, said.

"The reason is that with the rapid growth of middle - and high-income families in China in recent years, people's consumption concepts have been constantly upgraded, and the demand for high-quality and high-end household appliances has been increasing day by day. Affected by this, household appliances are upgrading in the direction of intelligent, green and high-end, and are increasingly popular in the market." Fu Yifu, senior researcher of the Star Map Financial Research Institute, told the International Business News reporter, The delayed demand for consumption upgrading due to the epidemic situation, combined with the advantages of national policies, will bring opportunities for the transformation and upgrading of the household appliance industry.

In this regard, home appliance enterprises have been ready to constantly improve their strategic layout and seize new heights. The reporter learned from Haier Zhijia that in response to the diversified demand brought by the consumption upgrading trend, Haier Zhijia proposed a three-level brand strategy of "high-end brand, scene brand and ecological brand", which opened up a new track from selling products, selling scenes to selling ecology. Recently, Haier launched the second phase of the scientific and technological innovation ecological park project, which will be a new starting point to undertake the Group's ecological brand strategy and the leadership of scientific and technological innovation strength, and also a new carrier for the Group to accelerate the implementation of ecological brands.

At the beginning of the new year, a series of new products of home appliance enterprises also appeared: Midea's Xiaowei home service robot opened pre-sale, Gree showed the new products of central air-conditioning heat pump live broadcast, and Changhong's first batch of MCU chip installed refrigerators went offline, making the high-end home appliance market more lively.

Fu Yifu said that in the future, home appliance enterprises should seize the opportunity, pay more attention to commodity quality and value creation, constantly improve product added value and competitiveness, and improve brand services, which is also an inevitable choice to further attract and consolidate consumers.