Text/Photo by Huang Ting Lin Xi, reporter of Yangcheng Evening News
Since April, the outbreak of the epidemic in many places in China has stimulated people's demand for storage of daily necessities; and freezers and refrigerators, which were previously regarded as large household appliances, have become the objects of many people's hoarding.
On April 19, a reporter from the Yangcheng Evening News found that there are still many hot-selling freezers on the Jingdong platform that are out of stock.
According to sales channels such as Suning Electric and Gome Electric, the sales of refrigerators (cabinets) have increased by 30% to 40%.
Under the needs of epidemic prevention and control, which type of freezer is the most popular?
Recently, have Guangzhou people joined the ranks of "buy, buy, buy"?
Does the popularity of freezers and refrigerators mean the formation of new consumption habits?
Many issues have received considerable attention.
Some analysts said that the "freezer storage" boom is regional and has a relatively limited impact on the entire industry; some experts also reminded that the hot sale of freezers reflects the consumer trend that consumers will pay more attention to food freezing and cold storage.
Families trade in old for new ones to buy large-capacity refrigerators, or change from one to two, and add two refrigerators (cabinets) to become "standard", which may bring new opportunities for the industry.
There are hot selling products on the e-commerce platform that are out of stock
Mr. Huang, who lives in Yuexiu, Guangzhou, has a family of six. He said: "There was a side-by-side refrigerator at home, but I saw that the neighbors in the community bought a freezer, and I recently stocked up a lot of meat and vegetables, so I ordered another one. 100-liter freezer for quick-frozen dumplings and seafood, etc.”
In the past, the peak sales season for refrigerators was from June to September each year, and the peak sales season for freezers was from November to January of the following year. However, the demand for food storage under the epidemic has spawned off-season sales "Xiaoyangchun".
Since April, from the point of view of the search index, whether it is on the Baidu index or the WeChat index, the popularity of keywords such as "freezer" and "refrigerator" has shown a significant upward trend, both year-on-year and month-on-month.
From April 8th to 9th, the search for "Freezer" on the Baidu Index reached the highest level in nearly half a month.
It is reported that in the past week, the top five cities in Jingdong Mall’s refrigerator orders are Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing, Shenzhen; Haier, Midea, Rongsheng and other brands have the highest sales.
On April 19, the reporter saw on the Jingdong platform that there are still many products that are out of stock on the freezer best-selling list.
Other sales channels also captured this strong consumer boom.
The relevant person in charge of Suning.com told reporters that since March, Suning.com's refrigerator sales have increased by 44% month-on-month; the top five refrigerator sales are Suzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, and the top five refrigerator sales are Beijing. , Chengdu, Nanjing, Chongqing, Xi'an.
From April 9th to 10th, Guangzhou Gome's freezer sales increased by 32% year-on-year, of which Tianhe, Haizhu and Liwan placed the most orders.
Small freezer and upright freezer sales are growing fastest
Different from the intuitive sales increase in e-commerce channels, the sales of freezers and refrigerators in some offline electrical stores in Guangzhou are not very obvious.
Ms. Kuang, the store manager of Suning's Grandview Plaza store, said that the sales of refrigerators in her store have increased since April 10, with a month-on-month increase of 16.8% last week, but the sales of freezers have not increased significantly.
"Many Guangzhou people buy refrigerators. If they are needed by their families, they generally try to consider large-capacity refrigerators within a fixed house area, so there will be no urgent need to buy refrigerators and freezers."
Consumers all over the world "stock up freezers", mostly as a supplement to the existing frozen storage space at home.
The information provided by JD.com shows that recently, refrigerators with functions such as large-capacity, ultra-thin, sterilization and deodorization, and partitioned storage are favored by more consumers. Household freezers, vertical freezers, and ice bars are used as storage supplements for refrigerators. A must-have "second refrigerator" for more homes.
Pei Dongmin, an analyst at Aowei Cloud.com, a home appliance research agency, also said that according to monitoring data, sales growth is dominated by household refrigerators, which are positioned as supplements to household refrigerators. Among them, small freezers and vertical freezers are the fastest growing. cabinet.
For example, she said that from April 11 to 17, the retail sales of the former accounted for 45.6% of the total retail sales of freezers, an increase of 1.8 percentage points; the retail sales of the latter accounted for 13.3%, a year-on-year increase of 6 percentage points.
"The boom in demand exists, but it is regional, not national, and has a relatively limited impact on the long-term sales of freezers and refrigerators." Pei Dongmin said that in 2020, the number of refrigerators (cabinets) owned by 100 households in my country has reached 101.8 , the market is saturated, and the growth of long-term sales still depends on the demand brought by trade-in and new house purchases and renovations.
Families will have higher requirements for refrigerated space
Will the arrival of "Xiaoyangchun" in the sales of refrigerators and freezers have an impact on home appliance manufacturers on the production side?
According to Wang Juan, a senior analyst at the research institute Industry Online, at present, due to the epidemic, terminal consumption has indeed experienced a wave of consumption of refrigerators and freezers, but there has not been a large number of enterprises increasing production in terms of production, only a small increase in individual enterprises. Domestic production.
According to Wang Juan's analysis, there are three reasons why the company has not increased production.
First, the production cost of raw materials and other raw materials in the current factory is relatively high, and there is no large-scale stockpiling of goods; second, the export of refrigerators and freezers still declines a lot, and the company has slightly adjusted its domestic and foreign sales and production; third, the company's shipment in the first quarter is better than the terminal Sales, so the terminal inventory is slightly higher than before.
She also emphasized: "According to the past, it is judged that this consumption fever has a high probability of being driven in the short term, but it is difficult to sustain it in the long term."
The changes in living habits reflected by the freezer "Xiaoyangchun" are also worthy of attention.
According to Zhang Yi, CEO of iiMedia Research, the normalization of epidemic prevention and control and the storage requirements for popular pre-made dishes have magnified consumers' demand for food freezing and cold storage, and further changed the consumption habits of the freezer and refrigerator markets.
"In the future, the number of households in the country will not change much, but families will have higher requirements for freezing space, such as buying large-capacity refrigerators by trade-in; Standard ', may bring new development opportunities for the industry." Zhang Yi said.