Image source @ Visual China
Text | Spirit Cat Finance
How to prove the existence of consumption upgrades?
From a macro level, the proportion of the tertiary industry in the GDP value is gradually becoming an important indicator of the level of national economic development. In recent years, the proportion of the mainland service industry has grown rapidly, the proportion of the service industry in GDP has exceeded 50% many times, and the contribution of the service industry to economic growth has been continuously improved.
From the perspective of consumers, the proportion of mainland material consumption in total expenditure is gradually shrinking, the proportion of spiritual consumption is gradually increasing, the living standards of residents are constantly improving, consumer demand is moving towards diversification and modernization, and people's evaluation criteria for happy life have also evolved from three turns and one sound of "four major pieces" to modern whole house intelligence, and household appliances have penetrated people's lives. According to data released by the Xinhua News Agency Lookout Think Tank, the number of home appliances in the mainland has exceeded 2.1 billion units.
The huge electrical base for the home maintenance industry depicts a vast space for development, iResearch data show that China's total household service expenditure in 2020 reached 909 billion, the data is expected to rise to 2.1 trillion in 2025, although the home service industry market size is huge, but has not yet been able to run out of listed companies, this trillion market is waiting for its new king.
The current state of the home maintenance industry
The home maintenance industry has a large market size, but the degree of industry standardization is low.
Mainland home appliances have more than 2.1 billion units, the industry gradually entered the stock market stage, residents' demand for home appliance maintenance services is gradually opening, to a certain extent, the larger the number of home appliances, the size of the home appliance maintenance market will also increase, now the home appliance industry encountered the ceiling into the stock market stage, in a sense can be called the turning point in the development of the home appliance maintenance industry, but the current development of the home appliance maintenance industry is not satisfactory.
The home appliance repair market is a typical "lemon market", also known as the Akerlov model, which refers to the market of information asymmetry, in which the seller of the product has more information about the quality of the product than the buyer. In extreme cases, markets will stop shrinking and not existing, which is known in information economics as adverse selection.
"No illness minor repair, small illness major repair" is a joke in the home appliance maintenance industry, because the user does not know whether the price they pay matches the value obtained, the industry lacks strict regulatory constraints, the merchant lacks a transparent service process, the essence of home appliance maintenance products is to provide technical services, and users usually have no understanding of maintenance technology, which makes profit seekers can use this to hide the real maintenance situation from users, in order to make huge profits.
First of all, the emergence of industry chaos will make consumers have a crisis of trust in the business, some users in order to avoid being deceived by the pit, in the electrical appliances when there is a problem will even choose not to repair directly replace, to a certain extent, affecting the growth of user demand, delaying the development of the industry scale.
Secondly, the industry chaos will lead to the phenomenon of bad money expelling good money, profit seekers by concealing the real maintenance situation from users and obtaining high profits, in fact, is the credibility of the consumer industry in disguise, due to the decline in the user's trust in the merchant, can only judge whether the charge is reasonable through the average market price, although the average price can help users avoid the pit deception of the profit seeker, but the average price is a loss for high-quality businesses, to a certain extent, the enthusiasm of merchants who insist on providing quality services has caused a blow. In turn, high-quality merchants will gradually launch the market, forming a phenomenon of bad currency expelling good money.
Finally, the industry chaos will make users think that the home appliance maintenance industry businesses are bad, as mentioned above, good businesses exit the market leads to a decline in the average quality of industry services, the average quality declines caused by an average price decline, the user insists on judging whether the charge is reasonable through the average market price, the real value of the service is above the average price of the business gradually withdraws from the market, thus forming a vicious circle, the user believes that the home appliance maintenance industry merchants are bad, and eventually the industry development falls into the shackles.
The chaos of the door-to-door maintenance industry is not empty, in the black cat complaint platform search "door-to-door maintenance" there are 10221 related complaint results, the reasons for complaints are basically related to the maintenance price and service attitude, the development of home appliance maintenance platform is trapped in the industry chaos word of mouth crisis.
Changes in user needs, new opportunities for home appliance repair
The emergence of the Internet has changed the business form of many industries, the traditional industry has stimulated new business forms under the empowerment of the Internet, the catering industry has integrated with the Internet to produce takeaway business, the industry has given birth to the online ride-hailing business, the user's consumption habits have migrated to the online as a whole, the impact of the epidemic has exacerbated the change of this trend, the Internet industry has tried to reconstruct all traditional business forms, and the family service is naturally included in the trillion-dollar market.
At present, the new generation of consumers is becoming the main force of consumption, they have a unique concept of consumption, the new generation of consumers can accept the premium of limited sneakers, but also willing to pay for dozens of pieces of milk tea, the new generation of consumers who are generous are also keen on "bargaining" and "building buildings", they are no longer concerned about just "material", but began to care about some abstract symbols at the spiritual level, such as social, appearance, IP, etc.
While trying to spend money while trying to save money, the new generation of consumers is by no means extravagant, but rationally clear what they want, in short, the new generation of consumers are paying for happiness, for goods that can meet psychological needs and spiritual needs, the new generation of consumers are not sensitive to price.
Back to the home maintenance industry, the industry began to integrate with the Internet, to provide online orders offline door-to-door service, for consumer habits are migrating online users, maintenance and online to a certain extent belong to just need, the model of the home maintenance platform is in demand and market, so why does this trillion market so far think that running out of a listed company?
The new generation of consumers are willing to try new things and are willing to pay for quality services, but the current family maintenance platform with low transparency and chaotic fees in the industry cannot capture the hearts of young consumers, and only by letting users clearly know that the price they pay has been matched, the family maintenance platform can become friends with users.
Random charges, management chaos leads to low user trust, which is the crux of the home maintenance industry, the end of solving these problems is to think about how to standardize, from the Internet past experience of transforming the traditional industry, the turning point is often the moment when product standardization lands.
How to standardize a non-standard product has become a key problem to be solved urgently in the home maintenance platform.
The contradiction between standardization and scale
From the perspective of the industry, scale is standardized before and after, and from the perspective of enterprises, it is standardization before scale and behind, how can there be scale without standards? And the relationship between standardization and scale is mutually restrictive throughout.
From the Internet successful transformation of the industry example, the traditional takeaway business is also around the destination near the range of restaurants, after the integration of the Internet there are two major changes, one is to empower the restaurant, the second is to introduce riders, the platform integrates restaurant information to provide users with choice, after placing an order to match the rider, the user can see the rider's activity trajectory, after the meal problem can apply for platform intervention, merchants and riders can not go around the platform, the platform plays a role in supervision and management.
The standardization of the takeaway business is inseparable from the transparent and visual price formulation and the supervision and management role played by the platform, but the difference between the takeaway and maintenance business is that the price of the former goods can be specifically measured, and the products provided by the maintenance business are not intuitively seen by the user, so the home maintenance platform needs a strict regulatory system to restrict the standardization of the service process.
Still take the takeaway business as an example, after the problem of takeaway meals in life, the user reflects the problem to the merchant or platform, apologizes and waives the single is the basic way of processing, which has almost become the consensus of the merchant, the platform and the user, the user knows that if the service is a problem, someone will be responsible for handling, and now many home appliance brands have begun to optimize after-sales service, the purpose is to increase brand competitiveness when the user purchases the choice, because consumers have higher enthusiasm for after-sales guaranteed product purchase.
This is also the case in the online car industry, driver driving age, completed singular number, vehicle information, pricing estimates, route selection, etc., are symbols of product standardization, for enterprises, only the first realization of standardization can develop the scale, blindly heavy marketing light service pursuit of expansion speed is the end of the game.
After product standardization, what needs to be considered is the problem of scale expansion, and like most industries, the development of home maintenance platform is roughly direct operation and joint operation.
The user service experience of the platform based on direct operation is better, but the cost is higher for enterprises, and the work is heavier, which represents the Jingdong platform. At present, the domestic head of the family maintenance platform "Woodpecker Home Maintenance" (hereinafter referred to as Woodpecker) is a direct-operated development model, according to the data of Tianyancha, the investors of Woodpecker include Xiaomi Group, Shunwei Capital and 58.com.
Although woodpeckers have achieved a certain degree of success in standardization and scale under the blessing of their own efforts and capital, the contradiction between standardization and scale has also had a certain degree of impact on the reputation of woodpeckers.
Standardization is inseparable from the supervision and management of the platform, but with the expansion of the scale of enterprise supervision and management pressure will also increase, due to cost constraints, standardization and scale for the business conditions of enterprises is the relationship between one and the other, the author in the network search "woodpecker home maintenance" found that woodpecker also has some industry common diseases, such as "random charging" and "after-sales service" and other issues.
At the moment when the home appliance industry enters the stock market and the user's consumption habits migrate, the future of the home appliance maintenance industry has a bright future, but there is still a long way to go for the maintenance service platform, and the way forward can not forget that it is the identity of the tertiary industry, the existence of the service industry is to meet the needs of users, and the user satisfaction of the enterprise can go further.