Appliance industry encounters smart madness

In less than 100 years, TVs have experienced tremendous growth from black and white to color, analog to digital, spherical to flat, 2D to 3D, and nowadays the popular 4K TVs, OLED TVs, and smart TVs. However, in recent years, the focus of competition in the television industry has begun to shift from a technology upgrade to a marketing model.

The one-way marketing model has declined, and the traditional TV manufacturers' voices have fallen behind. In the past, the television industry has always been a strong player in the role of the manufacturer, and the marketing promotion model is also based on one-way output. With the monopoly and authority of television manufacturers in the fields of products, technology, and information, the high-profile marketing methods led by manufacturers have once been favored. Among them, the upgrading of technology and the release of industry product standards are more common marketing tools for TV companies. That year, LED TV launched an uproar once it was launched. Consumers follow the trend to buy, and manufacturers earn enough money to be worthy of a beautiful marketing. Contrast recently, Changhong, a well-known domestic TV brand, released the industry's first "living room television standard." Despite the industry and the media have given it a lot of attention, consumers do not buy it. It can be seen that the traditional one-way promotion model of the television industry is gradually failing.

With the rapid development of the Internet, information search has become more and more convenient, and the gap between consumers and vendors has continuously narrowed, and the voice of TV manufacturers has begun to be challenged. At the same time, the technology of television products has been rapidly updated and upgraded, and it has even far surpassed the level of development of television content that is compatible with it. As a result, the more advanced technologies, the more they fall into the embarrassing situation of nowhere to display their talents. When 3D TV was just launched, it was an eye-opener for everyone and it also drew consumers' appetites. However, today, the supply of 3D TV sources is still far from meeting demand. Consumers have gradually returned to rationality after undergoing many “advanced consumption”, and are no longer willing to pay for immature functions.

Consumers have the dominance, experiential marketing becomes the only way consumers no longer blindly chase the top technology, but tend to choose products that are both in line with development trends and are relatively mature. On the one hand, this has largely changed the rules of the game in the television industry. The vendor-led marketing model is gone and replaced by a new consumer-driven model. On the other hand, compared with OLED, 4K and other overly advanced technologies, it also represents the development trend of the TV industry, and smart TVs that have begun to mature into maturity are favored by more and more consumers. In the new market environment, experiential marketing has become the only way for the brand competition in the TV industry.

In May 2012, Lenovo, a world-renowned IT vendor, released its first smart TV product and officially entered the home appliance industry. Subsequently, LeTV, Xiaomi and other IT companies have also joined the smart TV Red Sea. The TV industry has gradually formed the two major camps of traditional TV manufacturers and IT vendors. Whoever will be the final winner will become the focus of attention. According to Lu Jiebo, deputy secretary-general of the China Electronic Chamber of Commerce, “TV has changed from a simple viewing entertainment tool to a digital home multimedia information exchange center. The competition in the color TV industry is no longer simply a competition between hardware, but is transformed into operation. Systems, content, software, and chips are the contests between the soft power of the platform's operating models."

Product experience determines market decisions, and IT vendors will disrupt the television industry. The key to doing experiential marketing for the television industry is twofold. One is to have a product with superior experience, and the other is to provide consumers with as many experience opportunities as possible. For smart TV, a product that relies heavily on experience marketing, traditional home appliance manufacturers and IT vendors have distinct advantages and disadvantages.

With years of hard work, traditional home appliance manufacturers are familiar with consumers' TV buying habits and have significant advantages in terms of channels. They can provide rich venues and a broad platform for conducting experiential marketing. However, due to limitations in smart technologies and content operations, the experience of products has become a shortcoming of traditional home appliance manufacturers.

On the contrary, IT vendors have strong intelligent technologies and have absolute advantages in hardware computing capabilities, operating systems, content operations, and human-machine interaction, and can provide consumers with excellent product experiences. Although the resistance of the channel laying is still not small at this stage, but with the advancement of IT vendors, combined with the help of existing channels, I believe that the channel problem will be solved in the near future.

Whether it is traditional home appliance manufacturers, or new IT vendors, they have already realized the importance of experiential marketing. When the products of the two camps compete on the same stage in the store, the experience of the smart function becomes a key factor in consumer judgment. Under the experiential marketing flood, IT vendors rely on their technical strength, content integration capabilities, and keen sense of Internet trends, which will eventually overturn the TV industry's landscape and achieve success.