"After repeated deliberation and running-in of art and technology, 116 meticulous adjustments have hidden all the redundant lines, plus 52 manual polishing, creating the delicate and soft matte texture of the beautiful MWOW air conditioner." The user's minimalist air conditioner MWOW series.
However, such an air conditioner that looks very trendy is just a trial explosion of Midea air conditioners entering the smart home appliances and scene wars...
Cut into the scene, home ×××S home VS furniture
As a trial model, this minimalist air conditioner MWOW itself has a lot of selling points.
The so-called "patio air flow does not blow straight; 2.7 kWh of electricity a day; filter one-click extraction" three innovative functions, which themselves can really attract consumers. , but all buyers have been numb to aesthetic fatigue.
The key is that Midea no longer simply classifies itself as a home appliance module, but begins to have a sense of substitution at home.
It is actually a gimmick to rely on the famous Japanese designer Aoyama Shuhei in a reality show "Dream Transformer" to play the "chief temperature experience officer". However, Korean designers who personally designed MWOW air conditioners through various design choices, so that the concept of making an air conditioner no longer incompatible with most homes is worthy of recognition.
This is actually a transformation of Midea, a way to integrate into the scene experience. As a home appliance manufacturer, this idea is quite novel. On the 3C store side, this kind of thinking has become a fierce battle in reality.
In particular, Suning launched a big move called "scenario Internet retail" at the end of March, intending to compete with JD.com in the second half of the new retail format, and in the specific routine, it is through online VR and offline entities. In the way, various home model rooms are arranged to form a drainage and shopping guide for different groups of people.
Obviously, Midea's self-consciousness as a home appliance company just caters to the overall needs from channels to consumers.
If home appliances become home, they may still be dispensable and can be replaced. But what if it becomes a piece of furniture?
Who has nothing to change furniture to play with, and the biggest difference between furniture and home furnishing, perhaps, is that furniture needs to be moved into the home's decoration style to design, while home furnishing can be placed casually, not necessarily in a particularly uniform style. This is the blue ocean.
Under the pressure of Suning, JD.com urgently needs to embrace Midea
It is worth noting that the role played by Jingdong is quite embarrassing.
The old rival, which just changed its name to Suning Tesco in January, has brought great pressure to JD.com.
The latest data released by iResearch shows that in 2017, China's omni-channel home appliance sales reached 790.5 billion, Suning Tesco ranked first with a 20% share, and JD.com ranked second with a 12.3% share.
At the same time, Suning also announced not long ago that on its platform, new home appliance brands accounted for over 80% of the first launches, and more than 50% of home appliance explosions were released on Suning.
This has brought considerable pressure to JD.com, the top online 3C brand. On the other hand, Midea signed a three-year 50 billion sales plan with Suning, mainly focusing on kitchen and bathroom; on the other hand, it finalized the goal of selling 500,000 sets of Midea MWOW air conditioners with JD.com.
The idea of Midea is very simple, in differentiated channels, differentiated product distribution. Suning, which has extremely rich offline scenes, is more suitable for kitchens and bathrooms that need space to display and allow users to have an intuitive feeling; while air conditioners that can have a sense of experience through pictures and videos can be completed on JD.com.
However, in this division, Midea itself has subconsciously exposed its inert thinking that regards kitchen and bathroom as furniture and still regards air conditioners as home appliances.
For JD.com, the recovery of the offline scene has made it necessary to find more breakthroughs in the field of branded home appliances in the 3C field that it started, especially the e-commerce model to form explosive models to stimulate the market.
This was originally based on the long tail theory, but in the end, it was found that the absolute field of e-commerce is still the top explosive product JD.com, which must be relied on.
It is necessary to mention a background, that is, the Ministry of Commerce recently released data saying: "Last year, the development of physical retail in my country was good. The sales of 2,700 typical enterprises under monitoring increased by 4.6% year-on-year, and the growth rate was 3 percentage points faster than the same period of the previous year."
Can Kemei really use an air conditioner that takes the furniture route to open the road to explosion? For JD.com, it's just a matter of chance.
Want to enter the high-end from the explosion, Midea is "gold" for the brand
Taking the road of explosion is also a task Midea has been trying to accomplish in recent years. The mentor who made Midea form this thinking was actually Xiaomi.
In December 2014, Midea announced that it would issue 55 million shares to Xiaomi Technology. After the issuance, Xiaomi Technology will hold 1.29% of Midea.
At that time, Midea was immersed in the Internet sales myth created by Xiaomi with the ultimate single product. However, this cooperation only created an i-Youth Air Conditioner with poor sales, and it ended because the Xiaomi ecological chain aggressively entered the smart home.
New road options, revealed again in January 2017. Midea's huge investment in the acquisition of German robotics giant KUKA is widely regarded by the outside world as a key node in its entry into high-end home appliances and smart homes. This is far more concerned by the industry than the acquisition of Japan's Toshiba in the previous year.
For Midea, there is no brand advantage in the field of high-end home appliances. Taking the "2017 China High-end Home Appliance Consumer Survey Report" released by the Red Top Award Organizing Committee in December 2017 as an example, the top three high-end consumers consider when it comes to refrigerators, washing machines, range hoods, steamers/ovens and other products. All brands have no relationship with Midea; only in air conditioners and dishwashers, Midea ranks second and third.
Under the tide of consumption upgrade, Midea, which has been hovering in the low-end brand image, needs a crowbar to enter the brand recognition of high-end consumers, and like Xiaomi, it breaks the situation with the form of the ultimate single product explosion. , it is obviously easier to achieve the goal.
Air-conditioning, as its most advantageous field, has become the first trial-and-error maker of explosive models, and has incorporated scene elements and furniture concepts; and the sales that are not too strong will kill Midea's sales in other smart home and high-end home appliances. Trial and error of explosion models is unknown.
After all, it is also a fact that Midea has not escaped the cheap label after a combination of acquisitions of several giants and layout of overseas markets. (Published in the April 2018 issue of Computer Applications Digest)
Zhang Shule People's Network, People's Posts and Telecommunications columnist, Internet and game industry observers