Sinking channel special topic | Analysis of the sinking channels of China's major appliance market from January to September 2023
In 2023, the channel fragmentation of the home appliance industry will further intensify, and traditional entities and e-commerce will continue to face new challenges. From the consumption link, the building materials channel continues to absorb the pre-consumer demand, in the purchase process of the user to form a interception; in the form of consumption, the emerging e-commerce gradually break the single shelf model, with live broadcast + shelves multi-dimensional into the field of home appliance retail; from the consumption quality, the sinking market has experienced a period of scale expansion, into the pursuit of business quality of a new stage of development. Focusing on the sinking channels, compared with the vigorous development in 2022, 2023 will show the characteristics of pre-development rhythm, intensified category differentiation and structural upgrading.
Demand resilience and growth space are still there, and the front-loading characteristics of the shipment rhythm are prominent
From the perspective of scale growth, compared with the offline market and traditional e-commerce channels, the sinking market has achieved breakthrough growth. On the one hand, the shrinkage of physical stores has greatly reduced the contact points of users' offline experience, and at the same time, there is still some room for efficiency to be optimized in the extensive fourth- and sixth-level market channel pattern. This has also become an important factor for the rapid development of sinking channels in the current market. According to AVC monitoring data, after entering 2023, compared with traditional online channels, the sinking market still has a high demand resilience. In Q3 of 2023, the retail sales of major appliances in the sinking market increased by 20.1% year-on-year, far exceeding the 6.4% in the online market, and the market growth space is relatively broad.
The development of categories is differentiated, the space of the air-conditioning industry still exists, and the ice washing returns to rational development
From the perspective of major appliances market categories, based on the background of high growth of the air-conditioning industry, the air-conditioning market has risen prominently in the sinking channels. Ice washing, on the other hand, has entered a steady-state development stage. AVC monitoring data shows that in Q3 of 2023, the retail sales of refrigerators, washing machines, and air conditioners in the sinking market will increase by 3.6%, 1.3%, and 34.6% year-on-year, respectively. On the one hand, through the improvement of efficiency and product layout, the sinking channel has effectively driven the release of part of the demand; on the other hand, the penetration of air conditioning products in the fourth and sixth level market is not sufficient, and the popularity of demand has brought huge incremental space, which has a high degree of adaptability to the expansion of the sinking channel, and has also brought about the high growth of the air conditioning industry.
The upgrading of product structure has not yet stabilized, and the price of the sinking market has fluctuated for a long time
Consumers in the sinking market have a certain price sensitivity in product purchase, so the supply side needs greater market driving force in the upgrading of product structure. From the perspective of 23 consecutive months, compared with the online market, the price of the sinking market fluctuates sharply, which is closely related to the product shipment structure. Judging from the cumulative data of 23 years, there is still a lot of room for price improvement in the sinking market. In the future, driven by the improvement of user consumption capacity and the improvement of quality demand, the product structure and price structure of the sinking market will be further upgraded.