Online Share Rises, Live Broadcast Becomes New Normal

After Gree launched the nationwide live tour, Gome retail (00493. HK) announced on July 22 that it would launch a live broadcast with goods tour covering 31 provinces in China.

Wang Junzhou, President of Gome retail, said that the new consumption represented by "localized live retail mode" can not only activate consumption, but also realize economic transformation and upgrading, playing an important role in the economic recovery after the epidemic. The 21st century economic report noted that since this year, Gome has held a number of super live broadcasts, with a cumulative sales of more than 1.7 billion yuan.

Live broadcasting has become a magic weapon for the recovery of household appliances after the epidemic this year. Dong Mingzhu's seven live broadcast shows have achieved a total sales volume of 22.8 billion yuan. Skyworth, Hisense, Wanhe, Midea and other home appliance enterprises have also played with the president and general manager of the products.

Wu Haiquan, President of Midea Group in China, predicts that live broadcasting will continue in the home appliance industry, because it can solve some pain points of enterprises in some aspects and fields, especially the problem of marketing efficiency.

Increase of online share

During the epidemic period, offline sales suffered a heavy blow, and the home appliance industry was no exception. In response to the call of national epidemic prevention and control, most of the offline stores were closed, and some rigid demand in the home appliance market began to transfer to the online market.

According to AVC's Omni channel promotion data, in the first half of 2020, the white power market has experienced a channel reversal, and the online share has continuously broken through. From January to June, the proportion of online retail sales of air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines and freezers rose by more than 10 percentage points compared with that in 2019, reaching 54%, 63.6%, 64.3% and 54.3% respectively.

Under the influence of multiple factors, such as the alleviation of epidemic situation, economic recovery, slow-release of demand and price pull, 618 has become the sales turning point of white power in the first half of the year. According to the statistics of Aowei cloud, during the period of 618 this year (from the 22nd to 25th weeks), the online sales scale of domestic air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines and freezers increased by 11.1%, 21.8%, 30.6% and 16.8% respectively year-on-year.

"This year, the growth rate of the home appliance market is obviously faster than that of the offline market. At present, the online sales volume has exceeded that of the offline market. This is the first time that such a trend has appeared in the home appliance market in the past decades." Wen Jianping, chairman of Aowei cloud network, said in an interview with the media.

In addition to epidemic factors, there is also the impact of low price stimulus. Under the influence of the epidemic situation, the national saving sentiment is high, and the consumption expenditure has been narrowed; compared with the offline market, the price advantage of e-commerce channel has become a sharp weapon to capture consumers.

Taking air conditioning as an example, the data shows that in the first half of the year, the retail sales of air conditioners were 28.86 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 14.3%, and the retail sales were 83.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 26.9%. Throughout the first half of the year, the average price of air conditioning dropped by 14.7%.

Since the end of the year, some of the old energy efficiency products have been sold in Guangzhou.

Wu Haiquan told reporters that e-commerce sales of the United States accounted for about 30% last year, but from January to May this year, the proportion of e-commerce in the United States has soared to nearly 50%.

Gree, which has carried out seven live broadcasts, has also greatly increased its online sales share. According to the statistics of ovey cloud, the market share of Gree air conditioner online sales from April to June this year was 26.25%, 23.91% and 27.63%, respectively, with a year-on-year growth of 12.11%, 12.1% and 13.09%; the market share of sales was 29.17%, 28.38%, 31.85%, with a year-on-year increase of 9.59%, 11.51% and 12.32%.

Live broadcasting becomes the norm

Since the first live broadcast of Shuo Yin on April 24, Gree has carried out seven live broadcasts so far, with a total sales volume of more than 22.8 billion yuan. Dong Mingzhu, chairman and President of Gree Electric appliances, said that Gree's live broadcasting will become normal this year. In fact, not only Gree, live broadcasting has become the "standard configuration" of most home appliance enterprises.

According to Wu Haiquan, Midea has explored five kinds of live broadcast forms, and different forms have different functions. For example, store live broadcast or station live broadcast mainly solves the problems of transformation and product dissemination; star live broadcast solves the problem of user penetration; and the cooperation with Li Jiaqi, Weiya and other anchors with goods is to solve the problem of a new product or popular product Product volume; the fourth is cooperation with fast hand and waist talent to solve the problem of regional and crowd coverage; finally, Midea's own shopping guide and internal staff's live broadcast are used to solve the problems of online pull-down products and old user group services.

"We are carrying out these five categories, and from the current situation, we will strengthen the indicators of the whole supply chain and the application of data, including the flow, the precipitation of new customers and old customers. We will consider the overall situation, instead of simply looking at the sales volume of a live broadcast. This is meaningless." Wu Haiquan said.

It is pointed out that the live broadcast or live sales channel of aodian will become one of the core sales channels of aodian.

"On the other hand, we will continue to solve the problem of low efficiency in our e-commerce platform by using the new online channel." In Wu Haiquan's opinion, live broadcasting is also a kind of digitization, and this method brings new impetus to the introduction of new users, new scenes and optimization of supply chain.

Gome also has similar plans. According to Wang Junzhou, Gome has continued to promote the comprehensive integration of online and offline services since this year, taking stores as the center and using the new consumption mode of "community + live" to provide services to the surrounding 3-5 km community. Currently, Gome has established more than 170000 communities throughout the country, reaching more than 60 million users.

"This is an important way to achieve effective interaction with users, and also an important pillar to support live broadcasting." Wang said.

Channel flattening

It is worth noting that with the normalization of live broadcasting and online sales becoming more and more important, the channel reform of home appliance industry is also accelerating, and the trend of flattening is increasingly obvious.

Before that, Dong Mingzhu has repeatedly said that her live broadcast is to play a leading role, hoping to drive the bottom 30000 stores to embrace new retail. In fact, since Dong Mingzhu's live broadcast, whether it is selling products directly to consumers or the bottom merchants "taking goods" through live broadcast, they have broken the original sales system of Gree.

Although this has caused a lot of doubts, the trend of flattening household appliances channels has become irreversible. Not only Gree, Midea and Haier are facing the same problem, but Gree's distribution system is relatively large, which makes it even more resistant.

According to Zhao Meimei, general manager of Aowei cloud's white power business department, with the increasing online sales, the offline hierarchical distribution system of household appliances industry is gradually disintegrating, and enterprises are also trying to reduce the agency level to reach consumers with more competitive prices.

"With higher consumption and thinner profits, we see the impact of e-commerce on the original." Wu Haiquan said frankly, if the original traditional pricing and marketing model, in fact, can not match the requirements of the anchor with goods for the Commission.

"In terms of the whole marketing method, a part of the marketing expenses may have been set aside, but it is not needed now. The anchor with goods can help you" plant grass "for users directly in the live broadcasting room, as well as the sales, including part of the follow-up operation. Therefore, in the whole value distribution, live broadcasting will change the cost structure and profit structure of some products. " Wu Haiquan, for example.

Wang Yongqi, director of South China area of Midea air conditioner and general manager of Shenzhen Center, told reporters that Midea has been promoting the T + 3 production mode in recent years, reducing the inventory as much as possible, "dealers can order through app, no matter it is 1 set or 100 units, we can send it. It does not mean that we have to reduce more or less units before we can produce and ship to you."

How to coordinate the relationship between online and offline is a problem encountered by the whole industry and all categories. In the process of accelerating the transformation of the dealer system, Midea found that it needs to re plan according to the consumption scenarios and business types of users.

"We hope that we can transform our business system to new scenarios. To this end, We readjust the layout of offline formats, which is the key to the transformation, rather than simply go to Taobao and Jingdong to open a store. " Wu Haiquan said.

Zhao Meimei believes that the offline channel of household appliances needs to be transformed, not only to improve the online and offline Omni channel operation and service ability, but also to gradually transform to "experience store + sales shop", and gradually build up the ability of set sales.

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