The purchase of refrigerators in China
Due to the following circumstances people will conduct purchases of refrigerators:
1. First-time purchase in rural area
Low penetration rate of refrigerator in rural area will be raised due to present continuous growth of rural inhabitant income. The potential of the rural market is enormous.
2. Second-time purchase: upgrade and replacement of old refrigerators
51% families have owned their refrigerator since 1994. Based on the fact that a refrigerator’s service life is from 10 to 15 years, these families are now becoming the major consumers to conduct a second time purchase to upgrade and replace refrigerators. Only 17.1% families have replaced refrigerators. In the future 5 years, 23 million refrigerators will be in demand.
3. Newlywed and relocation demands
The prosperous real estate market and numerous newlyweds in China boost the growth of the household appliances market. Brand new household appliances are necessary to those families.
4. Government policy: trade in old home appliance for a new one
In June 2009, China launched a home appliances and electronics trade-in implementation solution. This means that people who have the registered residences in the pilot provinces and cities can gain a 10% subsidy when buying new home appliances products if they provide their old ones at the time of purchase.
The home appliances trade-in policy is reportedly the sister policy of China’s rural home appliances subsidy program and it has helped many Chinese manufacturers cover deficits and increase surpluses.
Sales channels
Sales channels in the mainland kitchen and bathroom appliances market fall into two types: traditional channels and new channels.
Traditional channels:
In this channel you will find large, medium and small department stores as well as franchised stores.
New channels:
In this channel you will find:
1.Home appliance retailers：
国美 GuoMei https://www.gome.com.cn/?cmpid=sem_baidu_pinpai_bt
苏宁 SuNing https://www.suning.cn/
2.Building materials chain stores
HomeMart https://www.homemart.com.cn/index.html
3.General merchandise stores (e.g. Carrefour, Wal-Mart)
4.E commerce:
(1) Individual e-commerce platform of each brand
海尔商城 Haier https://www.ehaier.com/
统帅Leader https://www.tongshuai.com/
Hisense https://www.hisense.com/
Samsung https://www.samsung.com
Panasonic https://panasonic.cn/
Sharp https://www.sharp.cn/
(2) Taobao Tmall: a Chinese-language website for business-to-consumer (B2C) online retail, spun off from Taobao, operated in the People’s Republic of China by the Alibaba Group. It is a platform for local Chinese and international businesses to sell quality, brand name goods to consumers in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. https://www.tmall.com/
Taobao: a C2C platform www.taobao.com
(4) Individual e-commerce platform of home appliance retailer
国美 GuoMei https://www.gome.com.cn/?cmpid=sem_baidu_pinpai_bt
苏宁 SuNing https://www.suning.cn/
(3) Dangdang.com: Dangdang’s main product categories include household merchandise, cosmetics, digital, home appliances, books, audio, and dozens of clothing, maternal and child categories. www.dangdang.com
(4) 库巴 Kuba: main product categories include household merchandise, cosmetics, digital, home appliances, books, audio, and dozens of clothing, maternal and child categories. https://www.coo8.com/
(5) 新七天XinQiTian: New 7’s main product categories include digital and home appliances. https://www.new7.com/
Where to buy refrigerators?
The new channel is growing and rapidly expanding. After several years of development, home appliance retail chain stores have become the major channel for people buying household appliances. It is estimated that specialized home appliance chain stores account for over 70% of the home appliance retail market in large and medium-sized cities, and they are extending to small cities.
Young consumers tend to conduct purchases of home appliance on E-commerce platforms because the price is lower and the process is convenient. Taobao and Jingdong are their first choices.
But most people would like to see the real products instead of the picture on the website, and sometimes use the products themselves. So many of them nowadays first check out the products in the store and then conduct purchases on line.
Sources:
https://wenku.baidu.com/view/40196df7ba0d4a7302763af3.html
