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The commercial home appliance market has become a new battlefield for multi-party "horse racing"
Written by Meng Huiyuan
Editing/Week of Wen
Air fryers, yogurt machines, electric hot pot cups... From the early only option smart TV, to the recent various smart home products that have become more and more out of the circle, the diversified and multi-level consumption pattern of the domestic household appliance market has been fully revealed. Because of the segmentation of different circles, ages and regions, new consumption hotspots continue to appear, making users choose more at the same time, but also making the competition in the home appliance market more intense.
Few people know that under the competitive situation of the Red Sea in the home appliance market, some people have long seen the potential of another development path - "the commercial air conditioning market will gradually become an important profit growth point for future air conditioning manufacturing enterprises." In 2012, Dong Mingzhu made such a judgment.
The reality is indeed so, not only the commercial air conditioning market has great development value, in recent years, including the head of the e-commerce platform, related brand manufacturers, self-employed people, etc., the commercial home appliance market that is still in the blue ocean has become a new battlefield for multi-party "horse racing".
In the face of the commercial appliances industry procurement channels chaos, price opaque, uneven quality, procurement efficiency and other drawbacks, or professional, or service, or price, entrants have their own tricks, all want to share a piece of the pie.
Are SMEs more likely to encounter the drawbacks of commercial e-commerce procurement?
Recently, Zhao Lin's department wants to replace several computers, but as a small and medium-sized enterprise with only a few dozen employees, the company does not have a unified procurement department, after asking colleagues in the management department, Zhao Lin learned that as long as the procurement requirements proposed by her department are approved by the leader, she can buy directly online, "It sounds very convenient, similar to our own purchase, that is, to go through more than one procurement process." ”
As Zhao Lin saw, unlike the early enterprise procurement behavior mainly through offline centralized procurement or batch declaration of procurement, with the rise of e-commerce shopping model, many small and medium-sized companies with low procurement frequency, small single purchase volume, more emphasis on cost performance and distribution services, have now abandoned a series of complex procurement processes such as "submitting demand - budgeting - product desk negotiation - taking contract - approval - placing orders - performing orders", because this set of commercial procurement is obviously inefficient, demand matching and transaction disconnection and other issues. Personalized customization and selection based on their own actual situation is obviously more in line with the current needs of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Of course, it's not just procurement models that are changing. People's continuous pursuit of the quality of life has actually spread from life to work: those desks and chairs that conform to human mechanics to make people more comfortable, electronic devices and network configurations that are just needed but constantly updated and iterative, these changes undoubtedly bring about the advancement and outbreak of personalized and diversified needs of commercial appliances.
According to the office needs of Zhao Lin's department, what she needs to buy is a small laptop that is easy to carry, has high memory, and can smoothly perform video editing operations. With these conditions, Zhao Lin found that in addition to purchasing through e-commerce platforms, many brands also have special corporate purchase websites, and even individual third-party suppliers will actively attract customers by advertising on multiple social platforms.
"The purchase channels are really very many", but Zhao Lin, who does not understand the computer configuration, still feels very difficult in querying specific product information, "Mainly I don't know which brand of the configuration is better, and it is not the end of the purchase, to consider the situation that may occur in the subsequent use process, the corresponding after-sales and warranty services of the product are also very important." ”
In the e-commerce platform back and forth to see the after-sales commitment is too troublesome, want to contact the brand directly but feel that the procurement scale is too small may not have any discount, under the entanglement, Zhao Lin saw the contact information of a third-party individual supplier, holding the idea of trying it out, she immediately contacted the supplier to tell her needs.
The supplier quickly selected several suitable computers for Zhao Lin, and gave her a more favorable offer than when the e-commerce platform did activities, promising a one-year warranty service. When I asked whether the product was genuine, I got a positive reply, "But I asked him to give specific product information and couldn't give it, only told me that it was a trade secret that was inconvenient to disclose, then even if it was cheap, I didn't dare to buy it." ”
The source of goods taken directly by the manufacturer is not convenient to give information
After thinking about it again and again, Zhao Lin finally decided to buy a computer on the e-commerce platform, "It seems that only it can take into account the price and after-sales service." ”
In fact, electronic products such as computers are already relatively transparent categories in terms of channels, prices, and services in commercial appliances. Some insiders have revealed that most of the current commercial electrical appliance brands are not well known to the market, and there are many types of standard and non-standard products according to the application scenarios, and there are generally problems of low brand recognition, lack of industry standards, high transportation costs and weak after-sales capabilities.
Just like in the extremely asymmetrical information kitchenware industry, "kitchenware is not as long as it is cheap, but where you plan to open a long-term store, you must take into account the thickness and pressure of stainless steel equipment, the refrigeration effect and preservation time of the refrigerator, the air volume of the smoke exhaust system corresponding to the kitchen requirements, as well as the after-sales service of the product, the settlement of the cost, etc. Do not choose hastily because of the low price in front of you, which is likely to lead to a bunch of problems in the back." A practitioner in the kitchenware industry said that professional kitchenware suppliers are definitely not just selling kitchenware, but will answer and recommend according to the problems and needs of users, and the key is how to screen out such a high-quality supplier.
In large enterprises, it is not the case, generally there are special procurement departments for procurement, and naturally enough reliable product suppliers can be screened out through bidding. And large-scale enterprise buyers are often large-scale bulk purchases, if directly docking product suppliers, usually will also bring about the low price advantage of large-scale procurement.
However, for small and medium-sized enterprises such as Zhao Lin's company and many self-employed individuals, it is easier to encounter problems such as chaotic procurement channels, opaque prices, uneven quality, and low procurement efficiency because of the opacity of industry information.
Giants entered the market, and many parties competed for the blue ocean market
Even if there are many drawbacks, it cannot hide the wide demand of users, and the attractiveness of commercial appliances as a blue ocean market is only whether it can bypass the pain points of the industry and directly hit the needs of users.
The first to enter and face this problem is, of course, the corresponding procurement channels of brand manufacturers. Usually after the brand side and the demand enterprise docking, the two sides will go through a set of traditional and lengthy procurement process, but some brand owners or subject to brand awareness, or due to product quality limitations, in this kind of docking process that does not need to show too much, in order to get orders to transfer part of the benefits is not uncommon, which is also in the outside impression, the procurement of this profession has a certain gray attribute of the important reason.
With the common tacit understanding between the purchasing parties to simplify the procurement process and enhance information transparency, a one-stop procurement platform based on the brand was born. For example, the one-stop procurement platform for IT equipment backed by the big brand Lenovo ,Lenovo E Cai", for a long time, the platform provided based on Lenovo's computers, mice, keyboards, printers and other products, as well as supporting selection recommendations, configuration solutions, procurement floor prices and other services, has become the first choice for many users in the procurement of commercial electronic office supplies.
However, the unremitting pursuit of convenience by B-end users has also allowed new competitors to see business opportunities. After all, docking brand procurement may be affected by long time, high transportation costs, single categories, etc., and when e-commerce becomes the main bearer of online shopping behavior, the integration ability of e-commerce to multi-brand categories brings a more comprehensive experience to B-end users.
In 2019, Jingdong announced a new market strategy for commercial kitchen appliances, and it jointly established the "Jingdong Commercial Kitchen Appliances Alliance" with mainstream commercial kitchen appliance brands such as Demars, Santo, Lechuang, Chuangerte, Aituo, and Dongbei.
In addition, Jingdong has also launched a one-stop solution for commercial engineering projects, such as before the planning of catering and canteens, Jingdong can provide kitchen design drawings for it, and provide one-stop overall services for its restaurant front hall, back kitchen hard decoration, table and chair purchase, kitchen miscellaneous supporting, fume purification, commercial water purification system and other equipment.
By 2020, commercial home appliances have also airborne into one of Tmall's hot categories. According to the data disclosed by the platform in the commercial entrepreneurship festival that year, the vending machine increased by 203% year-on-year, the display cabinet increased by 112%, the commercial fryer increased by 135% year-on-year, the commercial disinfection cabinet increased by 98%, the commercial intestinal powder machine increased by 120%, and the commercial popcorn machine increased by 258%.
Earlier than this, Alibaba launched the 1688 large enterprise procurement platform, which provided merchant screening and centralized bargaining services for the needs of enterprises' unplanned procurement.
Suning Tesco did not fall behind, and also proposed a one-stop solution for the pain points of the commercial appliance industry. It is reported that it has specially opened a must-have channel for opening stores, matching multiple store opening scenarios such as fast food snacks, restaurants, hot pot shops, milk tea baking, convenience stores, and large supermarkets, providing offline physical store merchants with a more convenient purchase path involving multiple brand categories, reducing transportation costs, and unifying charging standards.
In other words, the brand owner is "specialized", only doing products involving their own business categories; e-commerce brands are "full", and joint multi-category brand owners launch one-stop scene supporting products. Among brand owners and e-commerce brands, third-party individual suppliers survive and provide "low-cost" services in full accordance with the needs of users.
Xu Nian, an individual supplier who has focused on home appliance brands for many years, has always been the keyword of external publicity and promotion. Whether it is a mobile phone, a computer, or a home appliance, even if you only buy one, it is a wholesale price, and the order is free shipping, and you can also provide invoice services. Moreover, Xu Nian's quotation is adjusted in real time, and the quotation of almost all products is basically maintained below the special price of the e-commerce platform.
The price is generally lower than the activity price of the e-commerce platform
In addition to the low price, Xu Nian also pays great attention to the operation of the customer group, "as long as the people around me are recommended to buy home appliances here and successfully place an order, I will give a return rebate, and the old customer will give a suitable preferential price when he buys again." Unfortunately, because of the after-sales service, quality assurance, trust and other aspects of the brand and e-commerce platform, Xu Nian, who only relied on low prices to attract users, found that business began to become more and more difficult to do.
In any case, it is not difficult to see from the above situation that these three main commercial electrical appliance procurement channels are trying to create a more open, transparent and convenient commodity procurement channel and service model for B-end users.
Will e-commerce-led corporate buying become mainstream?
"From the perspective of scale, the scale of enterprise procurement platforms derived from e-commerce platforms (consumer e-commerce, B2B e-commerce) accounted for more than 98% in 2020, occupying an absolute dominant position." ——This set of data is from the "2021 China Enterprise Procurement Market Research Report".
The report shows that in the post-epidemic era, most enterprises have increased or continued to maintain their purchase amount and frequency on e-commerce platforms, and corporate procurement has continued to show an online trend, which makes procurement enterprises put forward higher requirements for the completeness of product categories and supply chain response capabilities of e-commerce platforms.
But this is not difficult for ambitious e-commerce platforms. The supply chain has always been the established advantage of the head e-commerce platform, and the problem of category expansion is not big, because at the same time that B-end users are gradually falling to the e-commerce platform, even its original competitor brand owners have experienced a huge change in the mentality of "refuse- wait and see - test the water", and the willingness to cooperate with the e-commerce platform has suddenly risen.
The willingness of brand owners to cooperate with e-commerce platforms has risen rapidly
According to McKinsey research data, during the April 2020 pandemic, 54% of suppliers believe that the online sales model is more effective or equally effective than the traditional sales model before the epidemic, and this proportion further increased to 83% after the epidemic stabilized in February 2021.
Brand owners attach greater importance to the procurement e-commerce market, it is expected that more brands will increase their layout on the enterprise procurement e-commerce platform, and the increase in the willingness of brand owners to cooperate with the enterprise procurement e-commerce platform will bring more increments to the enterprise procurement e-commerce market.
And under the catalysis of the epidemic, when more and more enterprises gradually develop the habit of purchasing on the mobile end, as mobile APP enters the era of stock competition, the trend of office mobility will exacerbate the Matthew effect of enterprise procurement e-commerce platform, and relying on super APP enterprise procurement e-commerce platform will have greater competitive advantage.
Taking Jingdong Commercial Appliances 11.11 war report data as an example, starting at 8 p.m. on October 31, a large number of enterprise users poured into Jingdong home appliances to buy commercial appliances explosive products according to Tu Suoji, as of 24:00 on November 1, commercial kitchen appliances sales increased by 435% year-on-year, and server category sales increased by 260% year-on-year, all of which hit the best results in history.
The strong combination of brand owners and e-commerce platforms is bound to bring 1+1>2 effects to both sides and corresponding enterprise users, and under this wave of operations, it seems that only individual suppliers whose survival difficulties have surged have been injured.
It is worth mentioning that compared with large enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises are more eager to reduce procurement costs, cover diversified procurement scenarios, and provide spot procurement, so SMEs are relatively more willing to complete the digital transformation of procurement with the help of third-party procurement e-commerce platforms.
That is to say, the consumption potential of small and medium-sized enterprises is greater, after several major e-commerce giants have entered the commercial appliance market, the future will inevitably have a moment of short intercourse, if the small and medium-sized enterprises in advance to make a targeted strategic layout, may harvest a more considerable return in advance.
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