Consumer Defined Air Conditioning Haier Defined Consumer Group

Mastering the ability to define consumption is far more important than doing large-scale work. For many domestic air-conditioning companies that have been trapped in the downturn of industrial development and market sales since the end of 2011, how to build a growth system in low-growth or even down-channel has become a public proposition.

In the existing Chinese air-conditioning enterprise groups, the development time does not exceed 30 years. In the past 20 years, many enterprises have been in a high-growth system driven by China’s unique demographic dividend, policy dividends, and other factors, and faced a rough, high-growth market with a “demand giant, vast space, and boundless development”. .

"In high growth periods, low-cost plunder is a normal thing for anyone who has to scale up and snatch market share. But in the current industrial environment, having the ability to define the market and consumer needs has become an enterprise's adversity. The only path to growth," said Haier Air-Conditions, the person in charge told reporters that allowing users to lead the company's technological innovation drive, so that enterprises meet the user demand system under the development momentum, will be the main trend of the future development of the entire air-conditioning industry.

What kind of air conditioner do users need?

In recent years, consumer demands have become increasingly difficult to understand and ideas have become more and more variable.

An air conditioner dealer disclosed that “in the past, many manufacturers were 'a product to the world' and we recommend consumers to buy it. Now completely different, consumers come with a purpose and do not want products. Shake his head and leave."

“For example, the newly-married consumers will focus on the appearance of air conditioners, the sense of fashion design, and the durability of products. For newly-arrived families, they will consider the health of the environment and worry about the residual formaldehyde in the home after renovation. Consumers are often used to the interconnection of home appliances in the intelligent era."

In this era of extremely developed networks and massive information supply, consumers are increasingly difficult to get.

However, in the view of Haier air-conditioning technicians, this is an era that fully respects individual needs. The R&D path of traditional air-conditioning companies that “one family of products can handle everyone” has failed. The needs of each group are different, but the business space brought by each demand group is new and must be met.

For air-conditioning companies, this is not only a subversion of the traditional product innovation system, but also a new revolution to create a demand-driven innovation system for the future.

“This voice Po air-conditioning is the consumer demand found in Haier’s 'China's Good Ideas' Consumer Demand Campaign”, Haier’s air-conditioning technicians revealed that many consumers have proposed in their activities whether they can develop their brains. The idea is to control the product technology of air-conditioning operations. With the help of intelligent voice control technology, Haier took the lead in the first revolution in air-conditioning control technology, turning “moving hands” into “moving moving mouths,” enabling many consumers to enjoy comfortable use after getting rid of restrictions on air-conditioning remote controls. Experience.

“In the future, with the upgrading of technology, it will not be ruled out that the technical function of controlling the operation of air conditioners with human brain ideas will be apparent. As long as consumers have such needs, companies can conduct corresponding research and development and form a large number of consumer groups. "New products", "China Enterprise News" reporter learned from Haier Air Conditioning, in recent years, for the needs of different consumer groups, Haier has introduced a series of addition to formaldehyde air conditioning, in addition to PM2.5 air conditioning, WIFI Internet of things air conditioning, 3 minutes warm room air conditioning and a series of Differentiated product groups.

Recently, at the China Science and Technology Museum, 28 old users emerged from tens of millions of users since the development of Haier air conditioners for 28 years, and they personally felt the new products defined by the user's needs. When a consumer's needs become the common desire of a group of people, it is clear that the business opportunities for businesses to meet consumer demand begin to burst in the process.

“Consumers will often only ask for and ask questions, and what companies need to do is to track down demand and solve problems,” said Li Dejun, director of the marketing department at Anhui University of Technology. Haier’s air-conditioner meets the demand, not just launching a series of new products. Instead, it establishes a complete consumer awareness system and technical solutions around consumer demand and individual products.

How do companies define consumer demand?

One fact that can easily be overlooked is that during the 20-years of marketization of China's air-conditioning industry, many companies have focused on product development not on consumers but on following competitors.

This has also caused the appearance of high homogeneity of products in the domestic air-conditioning market in recent years and the internal fact that “companies do not understand what the user wants”.

This is clearly an unprecedented turning point for Haier, who has been seeking to achieve transformation and upgrading through business model changes in recent years.

“In Haier, a traditional high wall that was originally used in enterprise technology innovation and user demand mining has been pushed down. Users have been involved in corporate technology innovation from the very beginning, providing ideas for the direction of corporate innovation. At the same time, the company’s innovative products are Satisfying consumers simultaneously, in turn, defines a group of consumers." An informed source told the “China Enterprise News” reporter that the biggest difference between Haier and its peers is that it breaks the self-containment of the traditional technological innovation of the enterprise and really allows the company to go out and let users come out.

The technologically-innovated products that were participated by the users eventually led Haier Air-Conditioner to attack the hearts of some consumers when it launched a series of new products to users. In the end, it will rely on its own product strength and user's reputation to influence and cover a larger consumer group, and to form a definition and leading of this consumer group.

At present, Haier has established five global R&D centers in China, Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Australia, and established a seamless connection system between user needs and global professional resources. This means that Haier can integrate the globalization of technological innovation resources and strengths within a short period of time after capturing consumer demand, and realize the rapid transfer of consumer demand to technological innovation results. Disruptive products that meet the needs.

Consumers are often not professionals and are easily confused by technical concepts and product illusions. This has also been the biggest resistance faced by leading companies such as Haier in driving innovation-driven consumption trends and seeking to define one new consumer group in recent years.

"In Haier's innovation-driven system, user demand is the dominant force, but the company's professional technology research and development team plays the key role of the hero behind the scenes." Professor Guan Yixuan, who is the vice chairman of the China Enterprise Development Strategy Research Association who has long followed the study of Haier's business model change, pointed out that innovation drives the development of Haier's products from the initial demand, and ultimately leads to consumption through unique innovations that exceed the company's needs.

What is the next step in the air-conditioning industry?

What makes many air-conditioning companies puzzled is that they have always been "top-to-bottom conduction systems" in which manufacturers sell their products to consumers. Nowadays, under the low-growth path of industry, it is necessary to put aside the figure so that consumers can in turn dominate the innovation and production of the company and even include the sales direction of the business.

This requires air-conditioning companies, not only to overhaul the traditional organizational structure, but also re-combine and guide the marketing system.

As a result, the system must be restructured and the structure restructured. It takes time and effort to bear the risk of change. If we insist on not changing, we will still follow the old path of traditional large-scale low prices, and this road will one day encounter a dead end. Li Dejun believes that “the change in consumption is not a change in death, change in initiative, and death in search of death. The path of transformation and upgrading of Haier air conditioning shows that only one way can be changed”.

"Let the consumer define the product. This is nothing bad. When the technology innovation function of the enterprise is more grounded, and there is a sense of market and consumer identity, the period of technological innovation of the enterprise is also greatly shortened." Haier Air Conditioning Person in Charge It is pointed out that as long as enterprises master the power of defining consumer groups, no matter how fast the consumer demand changes, the ever-changing principle is that our innovation-driven system holds the final say.

In 2013, the market curtain has opened, and the construction of a docking platform for technological innovation and consumer demand has become the consensus of all companies seeking growth and development in the cold winter. When consumers begin to become the main force in defining the market, the sustainable development of the company is just around the corner.