    The new round of "trade-in" has not only brought new opportunities in the home appliance market and new vitality in home appliance consumption, but also laid a solid foundation for building a green, circular and sustainable consumption system. Insiders pointed out that in this process, the e-commerce platform with a huge user base, efficient logistics and distribution capabilities and data management processes began to play an important role.
    "Trade-in" brings new incremental space
    Not long ago, the State Council issued the Action Plan for Promoting Large-scale Equipment Renewal and Trade-in of Consumer Goods (hereinafter referred to as the Action Plan), proposing four major actions, such as trade-in of consumer goods and recycling, supporting household appliance sales enterprises to jointly carry out trade-in promotion activities with production enterprises and recycling enterprises, opening online and offline trade-in zones for household appliances, and giving preferential treatment to consumers who exchange old appliances for energy-saving household appliances.
    The reporter noted that in response to the new round of "trade-in", home appliance enterprises have begun to take action.
    Haier said that home appliance enterprises should not only provide users with smarter and greener new products through technological innovation and intelligent manufacturing, but also actively explore new service models, from "replacing new home appliances" to "replacing new home scenes". It is reported that Haier will continue to carry out green, energy-saving and intelligent original technology research and development, provide home improvement consumer goods replacement services, and at the same time exert its strength in the "recycling and reuse" of home appliances by building a big data platform for recycling home appliances.
    Midea has launched a series of home appliance trade-in activities in various places, and set up trade-in convenience service points in some communities, communities and administrative villages to provide residents with on-site old machine evaluation, old machine recycling and simple home appliance cleaning services.
    The reason why the home appliance industry attaches great importance to trade-in is related to the great demand growth pressure faced by the current home appliance market.
    According to the data of the Ministry of Commerce, since the implementation of the old-for-new household appliances policy from June 2009 to December 2011, 92.98 million new household appliances in five categories have been sold nationwide, which has boosted direct consumption by 344.2 billion yuan, effectively guiding the release of consumption power of urban residents.
    At the same time, the household appliances purchased by urban and rural consumers will soon or have entered the elimination period. If these household appliances are used beyond the time limit, it is likely to cause a series of problems.
    Gree said that from the perspective of industry, China’s home appliance market has entered the peak period of upgrading. Trade-in will further enhance users’ enthusiasm for purchasing home appliances, stimulate the consumer market, and help enrich the application scenarios of new technologies. Haier also believes that the new round of "trade-in" can not only effectively stimulate market consumption, accelerate future industrial development, but also effectively promote industrial technology upgrading.
    According to industry analysis, after years of development, the home appliance industry has entered the stock market, and the overall consumption demand is mainly based on replacement. Trade-in can open up the consumption blocking point and provide a new incremental space with updated consumption as the main body, thus driving the whole home appliance industry to upgrade and expand.
    E-commerce platform will play an important role.
    After entering the digital age, the evolution of user demand has promoted the diversification of China’s home appliance retail channels, which also indicates that online platforms with various formats will play an important role in the new round of "trade-in" of home appliances.
    In the face of huge market space and consumers’ demand for new products, e-commerce platforms have begun to be laid out.
    On March 13th, Suning.cn announced that it would increase the subsidy of 10 billion yuan for trade-in, and jointly launch a long-term trade-in campaign with home appliance brands. JD.COM also said recently that it will invest 3 billion yuan in 2024 in conjunction with home appliance brands, and increase the subsidy for home appliance trade-in and upgrade the service experience.
    At the 2024 China Household Appliances and Consumer Electronics Expo held not long ago, JD.COM launched a number of "lightning new products" together with ten famous brands at home and abroad such as Haier, Samsung and Midea. The person in charge of the Home Life Division of JD.COM Retail Home Appliances said that in the "Lightning New Product Season" in JD.COM, the above-mentioned related "lightning new products" can enjoy a discount of 10% for the old ones.
    It is understood that as early as 2016, JD.COM launched a trade-in service for household appliances, and through a series of service upgrades, it helped consumers reduce the cost of buying new machines, while also providing a more convenient recycling and trade-in experience. Up to now, JD.COM has covered more than 200 sub-categories of household appliances. In 2023, JD.COM recovered more than 15 million household appliances through trade-in, and this figure is expected to reach 30 million in 2024.
    It is noteworthy that JD.COM has also used its own advantages in the supply chain to solve many pain points in the process of replacing old appliances with new ones.
    The person in charge of related business in JD.COM said that many consumers have no concept of "life" for household appliances, and think that even if there is a fault, they can continue to use it after being repaired. In addition, many consumers think that the old machine is worthless, the new machine is not cheap, and the replacement process is too cumbersome. It is precisely because of the fear of trouble that many users put up with old household appliances, use them when they can, or leave them unused for a long time.
    Therefore, in addition to providing trade-in subsidies with major brands, JD.COM has also actively exerted its efforts at the production end and recycling end, and cooperated with upstream and downstream partners to improve the recycling system of used household appliances from front-end old products to new products, to middle-end old products to new products, and then to back-end old products, thus optimizing the trade-in experience and forming a perfect closed loop of the whole industrial chain.
    According to industry insiders, in the face of a new round of "trade-in" of home appliances, the entire home appliance industry is gaining momentum. The mainstream home appliance channel headed by JD.COM, through the continuous optimization of the service system, accelerates the construction of a complete industrial chain cycle with upstream and downstream partners, laying a solid foundation for a new round of large-scale home appliance replacement.
    Guo Zhaofen, chief analyst of China International Electronic Commerce Center, said: "As a bridge between brand manufacturers and consumers, e-commerce platform is an important participant in the" trade-in "action based on its huge user base, efficient logistics and distribution capacity and digital management process." She pointed out that on the one hand, the e-commerce platform helps the "trade-in" activities to reach more consumers more quickly and effectively; On the other hand, the "one-stop trade-in" of the e-commerce platform not only enhances the service experience of consumers’ trade-in, but also stimulates consumers’ willingness to trade-in.
    Xu Dongsheng, vice chairman of China Household Electrical Appliances Association, also believes that the e-commerce platform has a large sales scale and strong digital management ability. Adopting the "internet plus Recycling" model can effectively implement management, make the whole process transparent and traceable, and help solve the problem of recycling order management.
    Promote the home appliance industry to be "green"
    As home appliances tend to be high-quality, intelligent and environmentally friendly, "the replacement of green smart home appliances" has become the protagonist of this large-scale home appliance market.
    It is understood that in the process of landing the Action Plan, "replacing the old" and "updating" are the key points. Therefore, to promote a new round of "trade-in" in the home appliance industry, it is necessary to coordinate production, supply and marketing, upstream and downstream, government and enterprises, online and offline, and comprehensive policies. Among them, the standardized recycling system will be the key.
    At present, the recycling system of waste household appliances is still in the process of standardized development. According to the relevant person in charge of JD.COM, in the past, most of the people engaged in the recycling of used household appliances were "roadside guerrillas". Now, through the recycling and decomposition of JD.COM and other formal channels, the environmental pollution of used household appliances has been effectively avoided, and the standardized dismantling industry of used household appliances has also developed vigorously. Next, more market players will take advantage of the policy dividend to jointly build a fast, convenient, controllable and efficient standardized recycling network.
    According to Zhou Yunjie, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Haier Group, the new round of "trade-in" will bring opportunities in three aspects: First, with the release and landing of policy details, the enthusiasm of users to purchase home appliances will be effectively enhanced, thus driving the whole industry to usher in new market opportunities; Secondly, under the background of rapid application of artificial intelligence and other technologies, users’ new demand for intelligent and green home appliances is accelerating the deepening of enterprises’ layout in the technical field, effectively promoting the technological upgrading of the industry; In addition, the trade-in of household appliances will accelerate the development of circular economy and provide a brand-new opportunity for the green transformation of the whole industry.
    The industry believes that household appliances are important bulk consumer goods, which not only plays an important role in improving the quality of life and improving life satisfaction, but also helps to stabilize the trend of consumption recovery, fully release the potential of domestic demand and promote economic development. As an important part of expanding domestic demand and promoting consumption, the new round of "trade-in" in home appliance industry will stimulate market vitality, improve the efficiency of trade-in, promote the consumption growth of green smart home appliances in China, and promote the transformation and upgrading of home appliance industry to green and low carbon. (Reporter Fu Yong)
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