The future of smart appliances in the eyes of consumers

For many five-star chefs, the most worrying thing is the patron's sentence: The dishes you make are really good, but they don't meet my appetite.

The Chinese home appliance industry and home appliance companies that are striding into the Internet era are currently faced with similar confusion: a series of smart home appliances and smart life built around smart home appliances cannot lead to consumer resonance in the market. A large number of consumers have also issued the same sigh: so many new smart appliances, but not what I want.

So what does smart consumers look like in the eyes of the consumer? What kind of scenario is smart life based on smart appliances? How will leading US companies, such as the current smart home appliance industry pioneer, break?

Status: Smart Home Appliances with External Heat

At present, with more and more home appliances entering the era of intelligence, smart home appliances based on digital, triple-play, Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing and other application technologies have become the strategic focus of most Chinese and foreign home appliance companies.

Whether it is white or black, the most recent two years have been smart products and strategies. Since last year, it has fully opened up the market for smart appliances. However, the front line from the home appliance market, as well as consumer feedback, is: smart appliances are not the mainstream of market consumption.

Internal heat and cold has become the “real portrayal” of the current development of smart appliances in the Chinese market. The reasons are as follows: On the one hand, the price of smart home appliances is too high and the product categories are too small. The promotion and promotion of the terminal market is still weak; on the other hand, the operability and experience of smart home appliances have not been given to many consumers. Accidents and surprises.

Zuo Yanji, the brand director of Zhongkang Market Research Co., Ltd. pointed out: “The current smart home appliances are still in the exploratory stage and there are still many problems that cause consumers to place smart appliances in a vague and passively acceptable state. Home appliance companies are both challenges and opportunities, allowing a small number of large companies to seize the smart market after exploring the road layout.”

Crux: product thinking encounters scene thinking

The same smart air-conditioning, for the enterprise, would like to express the technical advantages of "using WIFI a chain of smart technology, online diagnosis of cloud service platform". But what consumers want to know is whether they can bring more comfort, more energy, and more intelligent experience.

In the past two years, the biggest challenge faced by the Chinese home appliance industry's Internet transformation has been "likeness and incompatibility." The starting point of product technology thinking is to highlight how advanced and advanced the company’s products and technologies are. The starting point of scene thinking is completely from the perspective of users' most concerned about the use and experience.

For many consumers, the smart home appliances needed are not unsophisticated technical terms or cold smart products, but can bring more pleasant surprises and comfortable lives. The future of smart homes must be able to bring more surprises and experiences to users, more comfort and enjoyment, and get an integrated comfort experience from product purchase, delivery, installation and service.

For example, in the early morning when the smart air conditioner automatically wakes up according to the ambient temperature and humidity, it is possible to remove the ingredients from the smart refrigerator's recommended nutrient recipes. Then use the TV screen to view travel information to determine the most convenient route. After leaving home, you can check the situation at home with your webcam at any time. Once the home appliance fails, the system will take the initiative to remind the user and report to the factory for an appointment.

So how to jump out of product and technology thinking, return to the market and user needs, establish a new smart life application scenario, determine the smart home appliance market popularity and the success of consumer detonation, but also will affect the entire appliance industry transformation and upgrading process.

Breakthrough: The beautiful life under scene thinking

At present, smart home appliances as the industry's development trend has obtained the consensus of all manufacturers. What's more important is that consumers are also full of expectation and embarrassment for smart home appliances and smart life. However, how can we break the current embarrassing situation of “internal heat, external cold” and “applause?”, especially the market explosion of smart appliances?

Over the past few years, Midea Group has adopted the “Smart Home Strategy” as its engine to jump out of the transformational track of a single product technology and to create a “smart housekeeper of the air,” a “minister of nutrition wisdom,” “a smart housekeeper of water and health,” and a direct response to family and consumer demand. "Energy security wisdom steward" four wisdom butler service provides an integrated service based on life scenarios of smart appliances to smart life.

As Zhang Yanbin, Dean of the Orville Cloud Network Research Institute stated, “After entering the era of smart home appliances, home appliance companies are no longer simply product manufacturers, and consumers are not simply product buyers. The original one-pronged selling relationship It has become a love relationship under continuous interaction.The wisdom of Smart Group's smart home strategy lies in building a user-oriented service platform based on technology and products, allowing users to buy products but gain experience and surprises."

Driven by the smart home strategy, currently Midea Group realizes "interconnection, interoperability and mutual control" among its more than 30 home appliance categories based on App Store. At the same time, by opening agreements and interface systems to third parties, and cooperating with e-commerce companies such as Ali and JD.com, we can realize interconnection with other brands and a wider range of smart home life.

At the same time, on the basis of technological innovation and actively building smart home appliances, Midea also actively constructs an online and offline O2O service platform for customers, from purchase to delivery, installation and after-sales service. U.S. e-commerce as the new platform, the "Online Tmall, Jingdong, Suning Tesco" and other platforms, and "the United States under the line, the Suning National Chain and five-star regional chain, and the country more than 1,800 beautiful flagship store" After the seamless docking of the platforms, consumers are given the opportunity to purchase new products through online orders and offline delivery, delivery and installation integration, and physical store experience official website orders.

This left Zuo Yan believes that "as the leader in China's home appliance industry, Midea Group has taken the lead in product technology thinking and established a user experience scenario thinking that not only realizes the intelligent control of home appliances, but also realizes the user's intelligent experience. A new era of smart home appliance user experience has been opened up. This also coincides with the current Internet + strategy promoted by the country, which is to provide users with more services and experiences through intelligence."