In the past and in some rural places in China, people are accustomed to wash clothes by hands; however, as the society develops, more and more people do the laundry by washing machines. It is reported that there were more purchases on washing machines last year, especially roller types. The market turns into a potential of product upgrading purchase. At the same time, these manufactures compete with each other by sales promotion, reduction in price and giving customers’ gifts.
Chinese famous domestic washing machine brands: Haier(海尔), Little swan(小天鹅), Royalstar(荣事达), TCL, Midea(美的)
Washing machine pertains to major appliance (白色家电). There’re quite a lot of Chinese civil brands, however, lack of high technology, they can easily get obsolete not only in the market and because of competitors but also by Chinese shop-around customers. In this market, lack of core technology is equal to lose of market share. Here comes to a mature period for Chinese washing machine market which transferred from imitating international brands, technology import and cooperation into independent innovation. Haier(海尔), as the leading manufacture in washing machine area is a civil entrepreneurial company which was founded in Qingdao(青岛)in 1984 by Zhang Ruimin(张瑞敏), the current CEO of the company. Euromonito, the world’s famous association of customer marketing research released their latest statistics which showed Haier ranks global No.1 in major appliance market, with 7.8% market share in this global network. At the same time, its washing machine occupies 10.9%. It’s said that the brand value of Haier is worth 20.765 billion RMB and ranks No.44 in the world.
Foreign brands compete in Chinese huge market：Simens(西门子), LG, Sanyo(三洋), Samsung(三星) and Panasonic(松下)
Among all the top 10 washing machine brands in China, 5 of them are foreign brands. They are Simens from Germany, LG and Samsung from South Korea, Sanyo and Panasonic from Japan. They together take price war with local manufactures, as the core technology actually is mastered by GE and Bosch(博世). They take sales promotion to reduce price in advance in order to adapt the intensive competition which drives washing machine market into a meager profit market. This year Bosch which usually produced rollers comes into customers’ view for its overall washing machine promotion. Environmental protection, energy saving and silence are new trends of washing machine. These foreign companies push Chinese domestic brands to consider more about innovation if only they want to live in the market.
Written by Daxue Consulting China providing marketing research services
