In the face of the slow growth of the refrigerator market, high-end upgrading has become a common option for industry enterprises. In promoting the high-end process, many enterprises will focus on these two points: one is to raise prices, the other is the concept of packaging. As everyone knows, price promotion is the result rather than the means, and concept speculation is not conducive to the sustainable growth of the brand.

So, how should the high-end refrigerator industry go? During my recent visit to Midea Group's 50th anniversary product science and technology exhibition, I saw an answer with great enlightening value to the industry: focus on users and realize the two wheel drive of "Scene + technology".

Two misunderstandings of high end

As far as the refrigerator market is concerned, there are basically two characteristics in the past two years: first, after the universal dividend disappears, the demand for new products becomes the dominant force in the market; Second, while sales growth slowed down, sales increased steadily.

According to AVC's Omni channel data, in 2017, the retail volume of refrigerators in China was 33.76 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 0.6%, and the retail volume was 93.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.9%.

The trend of steady volume growth also continued to the first half of 2018. According to Ovi cloud data, in the first half of the year, the total sales volume of the refrigerator industry reached 16 million units, with an overall growth of 0.8%, and the overall demand remained stable; The total sales reached 54.9 billion yuan, an overall increase of 7.1%.

From the data point of view, the improvement of the average price of refrigerators leads to the steady growth of sales, which is also the direct embodiment of the high-end of refrigerators. From the industry point of view, upgrading and structural upgrading has become the main theme of the development of the refrigerator industry.

However, nail technology has noticed that there are still two misunderstandings in the face of how to promote high-end upgrading

One is that price increase is high-end. This is obviously the wrong logic of the reverse: it is the high-end that brings about the price increase, not the price increase that can bring about the high-end. Under the guidance of this wrong thinking, some enterprises raise product prices without obvious technology upgrading, design upgrading and service upgrading, resulting in the decline of user experience and the damage of brand reputation. High end can only become the internal language of enterprises, and users have no perception and recognition.

Second, the new concept is equal to high-end. The background of this wrong thinking is the collective explosion of new technologies and new concepts such as IOT, AI and smart home. They are not familiar with new things, so they have a great sense of anxiety, and resolve anxiety and cater to the market by packaging new concepts. The biggest problem in doing so is that it does not really innovate and upgrade products from the perspective of users' needs, nor does it really grasp the core technical capabilities to build a competitive moat, resulting in the disconnection between the concept and the actual scene, the disconnection between the imagination and its own capabilities, and eventually it is either abandoned by users or defeated in the competition, High end is like a castle on the sand, which is easy to collapse.

High price is not equal to high-end, concept is not equal to high-end, so how to develop the high-end of the refrigerator industry? This common problem of refrigerator industry needs to be solved.

Return to scene and technology

The exploration and practice of leading enterprises play an important role in promoting the solution of common problems in the industry. Recently, the author visited the 50th anniversary product technology exhibition of Midea Group, paid special attention to a series of display of its refrigerator products, and saw two key measures of Midea in high-end.

First of all, in terms of product technology exhibition, the author has two feelings: first, it highlights the scene, such as displaying products and technologies according to the real life scenes of real users such as living room, kitchen, bedroom, etc; Second, highlight the core technologies of differentiation, such as industrial Internet, robotics and automation, AI intelligence, etc.

Scene based product design and differentiated core technology constitute the two key supports of Midea refrigerator and Midea's high-end development path of the whole product system.

At the product technology exhibition, the author noticed that Midea displayed the high-end embedded refrigerators u600, u905 and Chinese kitchen bcd750, which fully reflected the high-end characteristics of "Scene + technology".

First of all, embedded design, perfectly integrated into the high-end living scene of modern kitchen. For high-end users, the design of home appliances should not only consider from the functional dimension, but also consider how to layout from integrating into the overall home environment. The embedded design of u600 and u905 is in line with the design trend of modern home. The integrated design of refrigerator and cabinet is not only the effective use of space, but also the improvement of the aesthetic feeling of kitchen design.

Secondly, the 3D assembled structure can be customized on demand. U600, as a fully embedded vertical refrigerator, realizes the 3D assembly mechanism design, which can carry out personalized assembly according to the user's kitchen, cabinet size and storage needs; U905 as a built-in split door refrigerator, interior parts can also achieve assembly design. Western Zhejiang is a traditional refrigerator era, which is unimaginable and impossible.

Thirdly, intelligent preservation technology is widely used to ensure the core needs of users. The author noticed that u600 refrigerator not only equipped with Midea black technology microcrystalline weekly fresh food technology, but also added intelligent voice interaction function, realized the voice recognition of microcrystalline weekly fresh food preservation, formed a closed-loop interactive experience of microcrystalline weekly fresh food input, setting, control, management, warning and deletion. U905 is not only equipped with microcrystalline one week fresh technology, but also equipped with UV technology to remove pesticide residues, which shows that Midea uses differentiated intelligent fresh-keeping technology to meet the core needs of users. One of the main features of bcd750 refrigerator is that it is equipped with a 21.5-inch high-definition screen, which can intelligently identify the ingredients with the food image recognition system, and can recommend recipes and purchase ingredients online; Of course, its intelligent preservation ability is also very strong, with intelligent humidity control space technology, fast freezing technology, PST intelligent sterilization and the industry's first warm storage space.

The product design starts from the user's real scene, and the core technology starts from the user's core pain point, which reflects a characteristic of Midea's high-end refrigerator, that is, all product upgrades and innovations must be "user-centered". If "scenario + technology" is a high-end specific methodology, "user centered" is the highest guiding principle.

The danger and opportunity of pattern reconstruction

High end is not an isolated industrial trend, but closely related to the evolution of the overall competition pattern of the refrigerator market. In other words, whether the high-end upgrade can be realized smoothly is related to the market position and even life and death of the brand.

It is an established reality that it is difficult for the market sales to grow in scale, but the dividend of sales growth is not likely to make the interests of enterprises in the industry equal. An obvious data is that in recent years, the brand concentration of the refrigerator industry has increased significantly. The increase of the head brand concentration has accelerated the elimination of small and medium-sized brands. In 2017, the number of refrigerator brands has decreased by 50 to 70, and the share of top 5 brands has approached 70%.

High end upgrading requires not only willingness but also ability, which is also the reason why head brands can speed up market harvesting. Midea refrigerator took the lead in occupying a high-end position in the industry. In June this year, it released a high-end brand positioning such as "global leader of intelligent refrigerators". On the product side, it launched Midea's high-end flagship of intelligent fresh-keeping refrigerators, microcrystalline series refrigerators, with the price ranging from 13999 yuan to 34999 yuan. In the first half of the year, while many refrigerator enterprises were in the mire of growth decline, Midea refrigerator achieved a year-on-year growth of more than 10%.

The reason why Midea refrigerator can occupy a strong position in the high-end market and maintain steady development lies in its deep insight into the needs of users, as well as the profound technical accumulation of Midea Group in intelligent identification, cloud computing, intelligent algorithm and intelligent control in the past 50 years.

Based on this, Midea refrigerator has emerged innovative designs and core technologies of leading industries, such as embedded design, 3D assembly, microcrystalline weekly fresh, intelligent humidity control, PST intelligent sterilization, UV pesticide residue removal and preservation technology, and has built differentiated high-end competitiveness.

It can be predicted that the refrigerator industry will gradually differentiate on the way of high-end upgrading, and the Matthew effect of survival of the fittest will be further intensified. Midea refrigerator, deeply integrated into the home scene and digging the moat of intelligent preservation competition, will become a leading force in the pattern remodeling.