Can customization help home appliance companies break out of the cold winter?

Under the background of macroeconomic recession, the traditional home appliance industry has collectively fallen into a cold winter. In the first half of this year, a large number of home appliance companies represented by Haier, Gree, and TCL have experienced varying degrees of revenue decline.

Taking this year's "National Day Golden Week" as an example, the overall sales of household appliances such as refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, and water heaters all showed a year-on-year decline. According to the sales statistics released by China Market Research, the three major white appliances, refrigerators, washing machines, and air conditioners, fell in both volume and price. The retail volume of refrigerators was 1.93 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 15.4%, and the retail sales were 7.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 14.7%; the retail volume of washing machines was 2.19 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 14.2%, and the retail sales were 5 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 13.1%; the retail volume of air conditioners was 2.06 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 17.4%, and the retail sales were 7.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 21.8%. The sales volume of color TVs in the offline market was 599,000 units, a year-on-year decrease of 27.7%, and the sales were 2.66 billion yuan.

Faced with the existing industry ceiling, home appliance manufacturers have begun to save themselves, and most of them have chosen to embrace the Internet wave and carry out innovation and transformation.

In the Internet era, consumers are becoming more and more picky, and their demands are becoming more and more diverse. "Personalization" has become a key word for consumers to choose home appliances. How to make the unchanging home appliances become "lively"? Some manufacturers have begun to seek change in tradition.

In July this year, Haier launched the "Crowd Creativity, Smart Home" campaign to target the personalized needs of home appliance users. After a three-month design cycle, its first batch of products and Haier Crowd Innovation Customization Platform were officially unveiled.

It is understood that on Haier's newly launched crowdfunding platform, users can participate in customization through three methods: module customization, crowd-creation customization, and exclusive customization. Taking crowd-creation design as an example, if a user proposes the requirement of "I hope the refrigerator can sing and watch TV series for me", then the design can be completed by netizen designers or Haier designers, and even cross-border cooperation and other diversified forms can be initiated to complete the product design to meet the user creativity of successful crowdfunding.

Chen Lucheng, vice president of Haier Home Appliances Industry Group, believes that "today, functional products can no longer meet user needs. Our users need personalized and customized products. Such products require us to interact and communicate, and this communication should permeate the entire design process. Design is based on life, not mass production."

Judging from the personalized home appliances that Haier has launched so far, they contain a lot of popular elements. After cooperating with Disney, Haier launched refrigerators with Disney classic cartoon characters Baymax and Mickey Mouse patterns. In addition, users can also print their own photos or favorite pictures on home appliances through customization, and receive exclusive "DIY home appliances" after placing an order.

From a formal perspective, Haier's "Creative Power, Smart Home" is nothing more than an attempt to satisfy consumers' pursuit of self-individuality in addition to the quality of home appliances. It allows home appliance manufacturers to change from manufacturing to customization, hoping to promote product innovation with the help of consumers' diverse ideas.

In fact, Haier is not the only follower of the C2B (consumer to business) home appliance customization model in recent years. Many well-known home appliance manufacturers have tried this in cooperation with e-commerce platforms. However, judging from the market reaction, consumers are still on the sidelines. Most of them participate in the interaction, but only a limited number actually place orders. Industry insiders said that although personalized customization of home appliances can enhance user stickiness, the so-called "customization" of most home appliance companies is still only about changing the appearance or specific functional modules, and few can really achieve "tailor-made". If home appliance companies want to break through the cold winter period with personalization, they should also prescribe the right medicine for the real pain points of consumers.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.