Refrigerator freezer market to be developed
Since the second quarter of this year, the sales of ice-cold products have recovered, the market of refrigerators has stabilized and the sales of freezers have been booming, showing the strong resilience of the home appliance market.
In the face of multiple pressures, the key refrigerator enterprises have risen to the challenge, actively acted, strengthened effective supply and innovative supply, and did everything possible to meet the needs of users.
This not only promotes its own high-quality development, but also makes the mature categories of home appliances glow with greater vitality.
Refrigerator freezer "1+1" is on fire
Taking advantage of the "618" promotion, Zong Xiaohui, a resident of Yicheng Street, Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province, purchased a 580-liter Meiling M fresh refrigerator at a price of 8,999 yuan, and the manufacturer included a 100-liter freezer.
"My new house needs to be renovated, and a whole set of home appliances needs to be added, and a large-capacity refrigerator is essential." Zong Xiaohui said that this year, the epidemic situation has been repeated, and the control measures are stricter, and the family needs to buy a lot of vegetables.
The original old refrigerator has a small capacity and needs to be replaced urgently.
In addition, everyone in the family likes to drink tea, and has stored all kinds of tea leaves, and has always had the idea of adding a refrigerator.
After comparing product functions and prices, Zong Xiaohui took a fancy to Meiling M fresh and raw refrigerators.
It just so happened that Meiling launched the M Fresh "1+1" package event in all terminal stores, buy one get one free, save trouble and worry.
"To truly meet the needs of users for large-capacity storage, it is not only necessary to 'stock up a lot', but also to 'stock up fresh'. A refrigerator alone is not enough." Liu Xiangyang, head of the Marketing Department of Changhong Meiling, told reporters that the company pioneered "1 +1 "Scientific hoarding mode, giving full play to the synergistic effect of refrigerators and freezers, which not only solves the storage needs of users under the epidemic, but also meets their pursuit of healthy and quality life, which is welcomed by the market.
In May alone, 586 sets of packaged products were sold, which achieved the expected goal and led to a substantial increase in the average price and share of refrigerators and freezers.
In that month, the sales of Meiling refrigerators increased by 171% year-on-year, outperforming the market by a large margin.
The booming sales of Meiling products is just a microcosm of the gradual recovery of the refrigerator market.
Although the first quarter of this year started unfavorably, the epidemic factors in March and April led to an increase in the demand for household food storage in some areas, and refrigerators and freezers ushered in a new wave of growth opportunities.
As the epidemic prevention and control situation improved, in May, the retail volume and retail sales of the refrigerator market increased by 10.0% and 11.9% respectively year-on-year.
"Since June, refrigerator sales have seen a large-scale growth." Li Qiang, vice president of Hisense Refrigerator Company and general manager of refrigerator marketing company, said that in this year's "618" promotion, its Rongsheng brand changed its channel sales model and broadcast live on Douyin. The platform's first-day sales exceeded 20 million yuan, ranking first in the 3C digital home appliance category on the Douyin brand list.
According to the monitoring of Aowei Cloud, during the "618" promotion period, the retail volume and retail sales of refrigerators in the online market increased by 11.7% and 12.8% respectively, and the retail volume and retail sales of refrigerators increased by 53.1% and 48.4% respectively.
"There is a small window of opportunity for the replacement of refrigerators and the outbreak of demand for small refrigerators and freezers." Pei Dongmin, Research Director of Aowei Cloud's Home Appliances Division, analyzed that although the market is under great downward pressure, the favorable effects of stabilizing the property market and promoting consumption are gradually emerging. Manufacturers are actively promoting, and the refrigerator market has recently achieved a rise in volume.
According to Wang Lei, Secretary-General of the China Household Electrical Appliances Association, the epidemic that has lasted for nearly three years has brought great changes to people's lives and has also brought a lot of impact to the home appliance market.
Relatively speaking, the refrigerator market demand has been relatively strong.
Refrigerator is just in need in daily life, and it is guaranteed in special times.
Data show that in 2020, the retail sales of the home appliance market will drop by 11.3% year-on-year, and the retail sales of the refrigerator market will drop by only 1.4% year-on-year.
In 2021, the retail sales growth of the refrigerator market will be 4.3 percentage points higher than that of the home appliance market.
In the first quarter of 2022, categories such as color TVs, washing machines, air conditioners, kitchen appliances, and small household appliances experienced a significant decline, and the decline in retail sales of refrigerators was only 3 percentage points lower than the industry market.
Develop the market according to the needs
Refrigerator is one of the household appliances most closely related to people's lives.
With the changes in user needs, large capacity and healthy preservation have become the mainstream development trends in the refrigerator industry.
Large capacity is the most important feature of refrigerators for young people.
How to increase the storage capacity of the refrigerator in a limited space?
Robam and Panasonic have effectively released the bottom space through the design of the compressor overhead structure; Haier integrated the core components of the compressor, evaporator and condenser as a whole to improve the overall use space.
Ultra-thin refrigerators are the first choice for consumers who want a refrigerator with a small footprint, large capacity, and an integrated home appliance decoration style.
This year's JD.com "618" data shows that the turnover of ultra-thin refrigerators is three times that of last year.
"By adopting the world's leading fourth-generation foam technology and thermal insulation materials, Rongsheng WILL hyperspace refrigerators control the wall thickness to 33mm, which is 44% less than the thickness of traditional refrigerators. While the overall thickness is reduced, the capacity and thermal insulation performance are greatly improved. , freeing up more space for the living room." Li Qiang said that large volume ratio (capacity/volume) is one of the main directions of the enterprise.
With the popularization of the concept of healthy life, consumers have become more and more "demanding" for the preservation of food ingredients.
Refrigerator companies have strengthened technological innovation, and there are endless selling points of functions such as extreme freshness, vacuum freshness, and oxygen control freshness.
Haier continues to upgrade original technologies such as the bottom-mounted constant temperature fresh-keeping system and the AI sterilization system, and apply them to more products on the market.
Taking the bottom-mounted constant temperature preservation technology as an example, this technology realizes that the temperature of the freezer compartment of the refrigerator is close to zero fluctuation, the wind speed reaches 0m/s, and the frozen meat is still stored for 30 days at the first-level freshness.
Meiling exerts its efforts in long-term preservation, and uses water molecule-activated preservation technology to solve the consumption pain points of short preservation time, high thawed blood, and poor preservation in bags, and realizes beef juice preservation for 99 days.
"Storage beyond preservation is one of the future opportunities for the refrigerator industry." Zhang Huawei, director of Midea Refrigerator User and Product Center, believes that the industry should dig deep into the value attributes of intelligent technology, so that refrigerators can break through the functional category of "storage + preservation" and inject " The new functional value of nutrition management.
Optimize the structure and tap the potential
Data shows that the number of refrigerators (cabinet) products owned by one hundred households in my country has exceeded one hundred. The refrigerator market is in the stock stage, and the renewal demand has become the dominant.
"The market demand for refrigerators will remain stable for a period of time in the future, but based on multiple factors such as consumer quality demand and industrial technology development, there are still opportunities for structural upgrades in the industry." Pei Dongmin believes.
The high-end market is a must for refrigerator manufacturers.
CMM data shows that in the first 23 weeks of 2022, the retail sales of refrigerator products above 10,000 yuan in the offline market accounted for 34.6%, and users have strong demand for high-end replacement; and from the perspective of brand layout, more and more brands are starting to Do high-end upgrades.
Haier has a clear lead in the refrigerator market.
As of the 23rd week of this year, the cumulative retail sales share of Haier refrigerators increased to 43.7%, ranking first in the market; retail sales increased by 2.8% year-on-year, ranking first in growth rate.
"This is the result of a high-quality development track centered on user needs." The person in charge of Haier Refrigerator said that the sales of Haier's large refrigerators will continue to grow at a relatively high rate in the next few years.
According to the company's market order plan, there will be a capacity gap in existing factories by 2023.
Haier Smart Home plans to invest 3.07 billion yuan to build a large refrigerator base with an annual output of 2 million units in Jiaozhou, Qingdao. The first phase is expected to be put into operation in July 2023.
Large-capacity, high-end and smart refrigerators are the main production directions of the base to continuously optimize product structure and expand market supply.
According to the forecast of Aowei Cloud, the retail sales of the domestic refrigerator market will reach 31.76 million units in 2022, a year-on-year decrease of 0.4%, and the retail sales will reach 95.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 1.3%.
In the face of downward pressure, how to fully tap the hidden needs of users and create a better user experience has become a must-answer question for many refrigerator manufacturers to survive and develop.
"Comprehensively widen the application scenarios of refrigerator products." Yu Qinxue, assistant to the president of Konka Group's white goods business department, said that refrigerator companies should develop applications in sub-scenarios such as mother and baby, beauty makeup, and red wine refrigerators to meet personalized consumer needs.
This year, the "1+1" combination sales of refrigerators and freezers generated by the demand for stockpiling due to the epidemic has made breakthroughs, allowing refrigerator companies to see new business opportunities and new growth.
Different from the assertion of some analysts that "the hot sales of refrigerators are short-term fluctuations", many industry insiders are more inclined to the long-term trend theory and are optimistic about the product combination of refrigerator + freezer or refrigerator + freezer + hall bar.
"The era of the second refrigeration equipment in the family has begun. The freezer is just the beginning. Once it is used, it actually opens up an idea." Wang Lei believes.
Liu Xiangyang also said that users' demand for large-capacity storage will exist for a long time. The storage combination of refrigerators and freezers is becoming a new trend, and the popularity of freezers is also accelerating, which will usher in continuous hot sales.
"The hot sale of refrigerators this time is not short-term, but the prelude to the gradual introduction of vertical refrigerators into urban households." Li Qiang analyzed that from the perspective of consumption habits in developed countries, adding a small refrigerator or vertical refrigerator to meet the cooling needs of urban households Development is inevitable.
This year, some big cities in my country have detonated a boom in freezer purchases ahead of schedule, and this trend will also spread to the secondary and tertiary markets.
According to Hisense's analysis of sales data, the impact of the epidemic in the first half of the year has accelerated the sales of three types of freezer products.
The first category is small-capacity freezers, and the combination of refrigerators and small freezers continues to sell well, with the momentum unabated; the second category is large-volume freezers, whose sales have begun to decline as the epidemic eases; the third category is vertical refrigerators, with With the intensification of upgrading and promotion, its advantages such as small footprint and beautiful appearance will continue to expand.
Zhou Lei