Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On November 22, Japanese home appliance brand Panasonic held an investor briefing to propose a new strategy to strengthen its overseas business.

President Masahiro Hindada said that by 2023, the share of local sales in Japan is expected to shrink to 35%, 40%, and is currently more than 50%. Among the many overseas markets, Mr Hinda highlighted China, India and Europe and plans to "increase China's market share to close to 20 per cent".

As one of the first Japanese household appliance brands to enter China, Panasonic has worked hard in the Chinese market for many years and has had a brilliant time. However, as of the first half of this year, Panasonic accounted for less than 0.3% of China's air conditioning market, making it a thoroughly marginal player, according to the latest statistics from Oviyun. Com.

With Panasonic frustrated with the Chinese market, there are Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Sharp, Sony and other Japanese brands.

Once upon a time, Japanese household appliance brands are the guarantee of quality and the popular object of consumers, and have made a series of outstanding achievements. But now that times have changed, Japanese brands leave the impression of declining sales, the sale and withdrawal of one company after another, and a lot of controversy on word-of-mouth.

How did Japanese household appliances, which dominated for a time, come to this point step by step? What lessons have the market been taught by the decline of Japanese brands and the rise of local brands?

In order to answer these questions, we may need to seriously review the history of the rise and fall of Japanese household appliance brands in China.

(photo from UNsplash) brilliant 20 years: technology is the strongest moat Japanese household appliance brands have formed a bond with the Chinese market, dating back to 1978-the first year of reform and opening up.

In October 1978, Matsushita Konosuke, then 78, personally went to the Osaka factory to welcome the Chinese delegation to Japan. This is the first time that a senior Chinese representative has visited Japan upon invitation since the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations.

According to Japanese media reports that year, Chinese representatives visited the production lines of televisions, fax machines, video recorders and other products at the Panasonic factory. The modern production process of Japanese enterprises and the strict quality inspection system have left a deep impression on the Chinese side. It is reported that the Chinese representative left a message to Matsushita Konosuke:

"can Mr. Panasonic help with China's modernization drive?"

According to the political climate at that time, Matsushita Konosuke knew very well that the Chinese delegation's remarks had opened the door for Panasonic to enter the Chinese market. The following year, Matsushita Konosuke visited China and signed a "Technical Cooperation No. 1" agreement with the government to provide black-and-white picture tube equipment for the Shanghai Light bulb Factory, which officially opened the prelude to bilateral cooperation.

In the late 1980s, Panasonic established Panasonic Color Picture Tube Co., Ltd. in Beijing, with an investment of 24.8 billion yen. The company was the largest Sino-Japanese joint venture of its time, and Panasonic became the first foreign household appliance brand to build a factory in China. After the full completion of the production line, Panasonic's color TV sets, air conditioners and other products quickly became popular all over the country and became a popular style of Japanese household appliances in the first generation.

Led by Big Brother Panasonic, Japanese brands such as Hitachi, Toshiba, Mitsubishi and Sharp swarmed in, blowing a fierce Japanese style in China's home appliance market.

Hitachi, which landed in Hong Kong as early as 1965, had a lot of contact with the Chinese mainland market and responded most quickly to policy changes. At about the same time as Panasonic and the Chinese government signed the cooperation agreement, Hitachi announced the establishment of a Chinese export office and a Beijing office, and established Fujian Hitachi TV Co., Ltd. in 1981, sounding the bugle of entering the Chinese market in an all-round way.

Shortly after that, Hitachi's Shenzhen Color display Factory and Shanghai Air conditioning Service Center were set up one after another, and color TV sets, air conditioners and other products began to occupy major shopping malls.

In the 1990s, Toshiba officially set up a color TV production line in China, and Panasonic and Hitachi faced a big rival.

At that time, Toshiba, the benchmark and the largest semiconductor company in Japan's technology industry, produced the first transistor TV, the first refrigerator and the first DVD machine in Japan. After entering the Chinese market, Toshiba has also set its sights on the hot category of color TVs, air conditioners and refrigerators.

Also focusing on the color TV track is Sharp, whose product line is highly vertical. At that time, Sharp was the "nail house" at the top of the list of local TV sales in Japan, once occupying the top spot for 17 years. The 1980s also coincided with the rise of national income, the relaxation of restrictions on the import of color TV sets, and the full outbreak of demand for color TV sets, which provided opportunities for the growth of Japanese brands.

Compared with the struggling local brands such as Changhong at that time, the biggest advantage of Japanese brands lies in two words-technology.

As early as 1955, Sony's predecessor, Tokyo Communications Industries, developed the world's first radio using semiconductor technology. Under the promotion of Sony founder Morita Akio, Japanese household appliance companies are aware of the importance of semiconductor technology to the production of household appliances and devote themselves to research and development.

Also take the color TV industry as an example. At its peak, Japanese companies owned 90% of the world's color TV technology patents, and core components such as color picture tubes were almost monopolized. The "Trilon" picture tube developed by Sony once dominated the global market for more than 40 years, and the popularization of liquid crystal technology did not withdraw from the historical stage until before 2008.

In addition, after the establishment of branches and production lines in China, the transportation and labor costs of Japanese brands have been greatly reduced, providing them with room for price reduction.

The data show that the average price of black-and-white televisions in Japan fell before the 1980s until it was finally replaced by color televisions. The average price of CRT color TV, which has become the new mainstream, also accelerated its decline in the late 1980s. After entering the Chinese market, this cost-effective advantage has also been continued.

(picture from Guotai Junan Securities) at the beginning of Japanese household appliance brands entering China, China's home appliance industry was still in the early stages of development, and all the technologies were very immature. For example, the color picture tube, the most important component of color TV, all needs to be imported from abroad. High imported parts and inexperienced production lines have pushed up the price of domestic color TV sets. On the contrary, it is a Japanese brand that mastered the core technology and mature production line, which impressed the Chinese from quality to performance-to-price ratio.

Matsushita Konosuke once said that the corporate responsibility is to "make what the public needs as cheap as tap water." With the help of standardized production process and ultra-high sales volume, Japanese household appliance brands effectively dilute production and operating costs, and benefit consumers.

The historical data of Guotai Junan Securities show that during the decade from 1990 to 2000, the sales and share of Japanese brands reached an all-time peak. During this period, a large number of local small and medium-sized brands are facing elimination, Midea, Changhong, Haier and other big brands are also lagging far behind in the competition, Japanese brands are difficult to meet competitors.

Among them, by 2000, the concentration of the domestic refrigerator market has reached 64.34%, the washing machine market is 58%, and the CR4 of color TV sets, air conditioners and other categories is also at a high level-of course, the top brands are all Japanese brands.

However, there are no eternal winners in business, and this law is appropriate in any industry. Since entering China in the late 1970s, Japanese household appliance brands have dominated the Chinese market for more than 20 years, and have finally reached the point of dynasty change.

And like many cases in the past, the dynasty was subverted, internal ailments and external challenges were indispensable.

The root causes of decline: quality decline, strategic mistakes, opponent efforts at the beginning of the new century, although the dominant position of Japanese household appliances has been weakened, but there are still a number of loyal fans. Panasonic, Sharp and other brands to the overall decline, but also from the internal and external suffered multiple critical attacks.

1. The first challenge of the overall decline in quality and service comes from the dissatisfaction of users, which is directed at the two core selling points of Japanese household appliance brands-product quality and after-sales service.

In the early days of entering China, Japanese household appliance brands mostly followed the direct marketing model, the R & D team was basically concentrated in Japan, and the Chinese production line was only responsible for assembly, sales and other downstream links. However, with the surge in demand for national electrical appliances and the rapid expansion of the production scale of household appliances in the 1980s and 1990s, the management model of headquarters having too much say, backward response speed of production lines in China and high operating costs is no longer applicable.

The only solution is to localize the production line: not only first-line assembly workers, but also technicians are fully localized, and part of the after-sales and quality inspection work is handed over to third-party teams to reduce operating costs and asset burden. However, when it comes to strategic decisions, headquarters instructions are still needed.

But in this way, the differences between the headquarters and the branches begin to intensify, and the product quality and after-sales service can not be completely controlled by the headquarters, gradually deviating from the original track. Especially after entering the 21st century, with the continuous improvement of domestic consumers' awareness of safeguarding their rights, the gradual popularity of the Internet has provided a way to make a sound, and there have been more complaints about the quality of various household appliance brands.

According to public data, Panasonic recalled 970000 cooking machines and more than 10,000 televisions due to quality problems between 2000 and 2015, while one of its air purifiers was on the CCTV quality blacklist because its parameters and functions were not in line with reality. Even the Let's Note series of laptops released in 2011 caught fire because of battery charging problems, resulting in a worldwide recall of nearly 2 million laptops.

Japanese household appliance brands, which win by quality, have lost their reputation because of many large-scale recalls, which has caused irreparable losses to their brand image. And up to now, the after-sales service quality of Japanese household appliance brands has not been significantly improved. If you look at all the social platforms, you can find a lot of bad reviews.

There is a question on Zhihu posted in 2017, "Why is Panasonic so good after sale?" It caused a lot of resonance among netizens. The respondent "more or less" said that Panasonic's after-sales "can be given up directly". The cordless vacuum cleaner battery bought only three months ago was scrapped, but the after-sales customer service said that the parts could not be replaced and could only be replaced by the whole machine. In addition, complaints about after-sale and maintenance services for large household appliances such as air conditioners and refrigerators also emerge one after another.

(picture from Zhihu) 2. What is even more saddening about the repeated setbacks in the transformation plan is that in the face of challenges such as declining share and questioned quality, Japanese household appliance brands do not choose to rise to the challenge, but turn around to open new business and new markets. Giving up the core position of home appliances prematurely and mistakenly betting on new businesses such as nuclear power and semiconductors have not only completely abandoned them by the Chinese market, but also directly shaken their own foundations.

Toshiba bought Westinghouse Electric in 2006 and officially entered the nuclear power industry, along with two home appliance companies, Mitsubishi and Hitachi. The final transaction price was as high as $5.4 billion, nearly three times Westinghouse's valuation at the time.

Toshiba has been called upon by the Japanese government to transform the nuclear power industry. But the 2011 Fukushima nuclear leak directly sent the industry to a low ebb. The debt ratio of Westinghouse Electric, which acquired at a high price, soared in the following years, and Toshiba itself broke out a $1.9 billion financial fraud scandal in 2016. this transformation is a pity to defeat Wei Weijie and die of illness.

Also failed are Sharp, which makes mobile phones, Panasonic, which makes semiconductors and plasma, and so on. The only successful transformation is Sony, which is betting on the consumer electronics industry.

It is worth mentioning that the continuous decline in quality and after-sales service quality has a lot to do with the late reuse of third-party foundry by Japanese household appliance brands. According to Japanese media reports, due to the continuous contraction of the home appliance business line, Hitachi explored the idea of entrusting overseas white electricity business to external production as early as 2010, while the local production line focused on the production of elevators and other industrial products.

Because of poor performance, it is necessary to control costs and reduce investment in production lines and after-sales service; because of unstable quality and poor after-sales service, home appliance sales continue to decline. Japanese brands come to a dead end in this way, and there is an inexplicable endless cycle in front of them.

After the failure of the transformation, a more serious financial crisis began to hit. In 2013, Panasonic restructured its business line and sold off its core assets: the plasma TV factory was shut down directly, selling its Chinese TV business, and shifting its focus to B2B areas such as cars and components. Hitachi has shifted its focus to the industrial sector, focusing on the elevator business. After that, Japanese household appliance brands are no longer difficult to become, and the decline has been irreparable.

3. At a time when competitors are rising rapidly, the third and last challenge that completely defeats Japanese brands also appears-the rise of external competitors.

After the reform and opening up and China's accession to the WTO, China's import and export trade has exploded. Korean household appliances such as Samsung and LG, as well as European and American brands represented by Siemens, Philips and Whirlpool, have landed in the Chinese market at the end of the last century and the beginning of the 21st century. In the first 10 years of the 21st century, Japanese brands were in decline, while Korean, European and American household appliance brands briefly became dominant during this period.

Siemens grabbed the high end of the market with three-piece sets of refrigerators, washing machines and kitchen electricity, while Whirlpool brought fresh products such as household water purifiers and roller washing machines. Compared with the small profits and quick sales of Japanese brands, Korean, European and American brands focus their firepower on the high-end market. This strategy is also in line with the trend of the rapid development of China's national economy and the upgrading of household appliance consumption, which makes Japanese brands lose their helmets and armour for a while.

When the old master abdicates, there will naturally be a new king on the throne, which is an immutable law in the business world. Japanese, Korean, European and American brands were all popular for a while, but they did not continue their rule.

After the abdication of foreign brands such as Japan, South Korea, Europe and the United States, of course, it is time for local brands to rise to the top.

The rise of local brands: technology, capital, production line comprehensive upgrading of Japanese brands in China, how is the development of local brands?

We can look at the developments of some representative enterprises: in 1980, an enterprise called Mingzhu just produced the first metal platform fan, which is the predecessor of China's home appliance overlord Mei in the future; Changhong in the same period has just completed the reform from state to commercialization, and the first production line was not built until 1986.

A China Finance magazine published in June 1981 recorded a set of data: in 1980, there were only more than 2000 household appliance factories in China, producing 7.25 million fans, 13000 air conditioners and 49000 refrigerators. The production capacity of air conditioners and refrigerators is even a fraction of that of Japanese brands.

There is no doubt that Chinese local brands do not have the strength to compete with Japanese brands at this time. The stumbling blocks hindering the early development of China's home appliance industry are capital and technology-and these defects happen to be the advantages of Japanese household appliance brands.

In this context, local brands did not expect miracles and once realized overtaking in corners. Finally, we can achieve transcendence by decades of accumulated strength and accurate capture of the development trend of the times.

1. Introducing advanced technology, accumulating production experience and accumulating technology and production experience in a down-to-earth manner is the most correct decision for local brands. When Japanese household appliance enterprises entered the Chinese market on a large scale in the 1980s, local brands also seized the opportunity to establish a cooperative relationship with the former and introduce each other's advanced technology and production lines.

For example, Midea imported air-conditioning compressor technology from Toshiba, and Galanz's first microwave oven production line was set up with the help of the Japanese manufacturer. Changhong clasped Panasonic thighs and set up a joint laboratory. Hisense also bought a batch of 14-inch color TV production equipment from Panasonic.

It is undeniable that Japanese brands have played a vital role in the growth of Chinese brands. The cooperation in the 1980s has laid a foundation for R & D and production for local household appliance enterprises, which is of great significance for future development.

(picture from Guotai Junan Securities) 2, eclectic, enhance capital strength at the beginning of the new century, local brands have entered a crucial window of reform. First of all, it is an unprecedented wave of mergers and acquisitions.

In 2004, Gree Electric Appliances completed the acquisition of four subsidiaries of Gree Group, namely, Lingda Compressor Co., Ltd., Gree Xinyuan Electronics Co., Ltd., Gree Electrical Engineering Co., Ltd., and Gree small Home Appliances Co., Ltd., also in 2004. Midea first took over Hualing, and then took a 50.5% stake in the Rongshida Metec joint venture to expand the air conditioning and refrigerator business line in an all-round way. The following year, Hisense took over Rongsheng's Kelon, and took over the latter's technology and R & D team.

There were many mergers and acquisitions like this in that period. Through eclecticism and tamping their own strength, a number of local brands, such as Midea, Gree, Hisense and Changhong, gradually replaced Japanese and Korean brands to become the rulers of China's home appliance market.

3. After the conditions of brand positioning and production line upgrade are ripe, the upgrading of production line, brand concept and product design will come naturally.

As we all know, the manufacturing industry is now setting off a digital intelligence revolution, upgrading all aspects of procurement, production, logistics and after-sales. But don't forget that it is Midea, Haier and other household appliance enterprises that are the first to use digital production lines and supply chains.

As early as 2012, Midea announced the construction of an automation factory and purchased a large number of automation equipment from foreign countries, including robotic arms. At the celebration of Midea's 30th anniversary in 2015, Wu Wenxin, then president of Midea's air-conditioning division, said that Midea would invest 5 billion yuan in the next five years to upgrade its production line to achieve complete automation, intelligence and informatization.

"whether it is a product upgrade or a management upgrade, eventually it has to be done through automation," says Wu Wenxin, describing the strategic significance of automation to the United States. In that year, revenue from Midea's air-conditioning business grew nearly 40 per cent year-on-year to 70 billion yuan, while the number of employees plummeted from 50, 000 to 26000. By 2018, the number of employees in this line of business has dropped to about 20,000, and the performance has continued to rise.

And the production line upgrade at the same time, there is also brand positioning. The slogan made by Gree goes deep into the body and mind, while Haier puts the shining label of "made in China" on itself. Through brand upgrading and rapid product update iteration, local brands have gradually wiped out the entry-level market of Japanese brands and the high-end market of European and American brands.

Historical data from China International Capital Corporation show that by 2012, Japanese brands accounted for only 23%, 20%, 12% and 4% of the retail market for color TV sets, washing machines, air conditioners and refrigerators, respectively, completely falling from the throne. Instead, Gree and Mei, which together occupy half of the air conditioning market, Haier, which has become the dominant player in the refrigerator industry, and local brands such as TCL and Changhong that go hand in hand in the color TV market.

Win or lose, Chinese local brands have begun to harvest the fruits of victory in recent years-- the acquisition of the Chinese business of Japanese household appliance brands.

Toshiba is the most thorough Japanese household appliance brand, not even one of them.

In 2016, an 80.1 per cent stake in Toshiba's white power business was sold to Midea for 52.7 billion yen, which also received a 40-year brand license from Toshiba and more than 5000 patents, as well as production lines and offline agents around the world. The following year, Toshiba's TV business in China was sold independently to Hisense, while the most proud PC business was sold to Sharp, essentially withdrawing from the Chinese market.

In 2016, another veteran player Sharp was won by Hon Hai with 388.8 billion yen, and the right of management and ownership were completely changed. At this point, Japanese household appliance brands, which either shrink their business, sell themselves to Chinese enterprises, or withdraw completely from the Chinese market, seem to have completely disappeared from our field of vision.

However, there will never be a lack of competition in a business society, and no business will let go of visible profits-although China's home appliance market has long been a red sea, it is still full of potential compared with Japan.

Japanese brands, which have been dormant for many years, may just be waiting for a suitable opportunity, a new opportunity for them to dream back to the top.

The future pattern: can Japanese brands make a comeback? As stated at the beginning of the article, Panasonic is plotting a comeback, and many Japanese brands have never completely given up on the Chinese market.

Among them, Panasonic mentioned at the beginning of the article has the deepest relationship with the Chinese market and is most reluctant to give up this piece of fat meat.

In December 2019, Panasonic signed a contract to build a factory in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province. Shortly before that, Panasonic had just been revealed that it was going to sell the Suzhou factory. Spending a lot of money to build a new plant is undoubtedly Panasonic's best way to respond to questions and stabilize the mood of shareholders and consumers. It also shows once again that Panasonic will not give up the Chinese market easily.

However, this comeback, Panasonic's strategy has also undergone some changes: no longer focus on traditional large appliances, but on the hot track of small appliances in recent years.

Panasonic China Co., Ltd., established in 2017, focuses on the development of small household appliances business. Among them, the fastest-growing rice cooker brand once squeezed into the Chinese market sales list TOP 5, fighting a long-lost turnaround for Panasonic.

Compared with Panasonic, which still maintains pure Japanese blood, although Sharp, which has long been sold as Hon Hai, has changed ownership, the brand of the Japanese brand has not been eliminated. Sharp is also targeting a hotter tuyere-smart home-to recover lost ground in the Chinese market.

Sharp released a strategy for the development of high-end home appliances in April this year, announcing a full commitment to the smart home industry. According to the plan, Sharp aims to increase the share of sales of smart home appliances to 70 per cent in Japan and more than 50 per cent in overseas markets by 2024, with emphasis on several markets such as Chinese mainland and the US.

In the Chinese market, Sharp put forward the "8K+AIoT" strategy to build the Internet of things as early as 2019. At present, Sharp's smart things system already covers more than 330 items on sale, such as televisions, mobile phones, washing machines, refrigerators and air conditioners, and the product matrix should not be underestimated. A few days ago, Sharp also established a comprehensive cooperation with Shenzhen Anlitong Intelligence, authorizing the latter to act as Sharp Smart Lock's sales and other services in the Chinese market.

However, have these attempts been successful?

No one can guarantee what will happen in the future. But now the only thing that is certain is that when the time comes to 2022, the pattern of local brands playing the leading role and Japanese brands as foil remains unchanged.

Take the core category of air conditioners as an example. According to Oviyun, sales of TOP 10 in the first half of this year were all local brands, accounting for more than 90 per cent of the total. Among them, the top three giants Gree, Midea and Haier occupy 70% of the market share, and their dominant position is unbreakable.

Among Japanese brands, ashes player Panasonic has only 0.27% of the offline market and 0.57% online, a far cry from its peak. In addition to Panasonic, only Dajin and Hitachi, which are based on the high-end market, have retained the strength of the war, with the latter's market share of fine decoration air-conditioning rising 2.7% year-on-year, saving the last trace of face for Japanese high-end brands.

In addition, tracks such as high-end appliances, small appliances and smart homes, which Japanese brands see as hopes for a turnaround, are also packed with local Chinese brands-in this wave of transformation, faltering Japanese brands have once again missed the opportunity to start.

In the field of smart home, in the same year that Sharp put forward the "8K+AIoT" strategy, Midea has put forward the goal of "connecting 100 million devices in three years", and launched the industry's first home appliance full-link near-field communication technology application Smart Touch, which opens up many intelligent home devices such as smart curtains, air conditioners, floor-sweeping robots and televisions.

At the high end of the market, Haier's Casati and Gree take turns at the top of the list of high-end air conditioners, leaving Japanese brands such as Mitsubishi and Daijin far behind, according to Zhongyikang. By the end of last year, Chinese local brands accounted for more than 80 per cent of the market for ultra-high-end cabinet air conditioners worth more than 15000 yuan. With less than 20% market share left, Japanese brands still have to compete with Korean and American brands.

Although we cannot predict the future of Japanese brands, the facts before us prove that the era that belongs to them is really over.

It's not easy to make a comeback.

The apocalypse of decline: do not rest on your laurels, blindly arrogant into China for more than 40 years, Japanese brands have been brilliant along the way, but also fell to the bottom, is now trying to hit bottom to rebound. The course of its development is sobering and more worthy of vigilance. From the history of the development of Japanese brands in China, ignoring the needs of users, slow response to changes in the market and the gradual loss of innovation ability are the root causes of all problems.

Both the aforementioned after-sales service loopholes and the extremely bad crisis public relations in previous large-scale recalls reveal the arrogant attitude of Japanese household appliance brands and lead to a deteriorating relationship between merchants and consumers.

In 2008 and 2010, Toshiba's washing and drying machines were recalled on a large scale, including more than 30 models produced since 2005, involving more than 580000 units. But in these incidents, the products sold in the Chinese mainland market have not been recalled immediately.

Toshiba explained that the models involved in the washing machines were not sold in the Chinese mainland area, but were later questioned by the media and consumers.

In late 2010, Toshiba recalled 14000 laptops with quality defects in Japan, also ignoring the Chinese market. This time, Toshiba did not escape the eyes of consumers: according to the official website, the recalled laptops went on sale simultaneously in the Chinese mainland market and the Japanese market, with exactly the same product parameters and design.

This time, Toshiba replied that it had not received a complaint from consumers in Chinese mainland, so it did not start the recall process. A similar situation has been repeated again and again in Sanyo's recall of dishwashers, washing machines and other products.

No matter how to find compensation in the future, the image of Japanese household appliance brands such as Toshiba and Panasonic in the Chinese market has hit rock bottom, so it is difficult for consumers to regain trust.

As for the lack of innovative ability and lagging response speed, it is reflected incisively and vividly in a series of operations, such as outdated transformation, superstition that traditional large household appliances miss small household appliances, smart home entry opportunities and so on.

As the new ruler of the market, local brands and Japanese brands mirror each other in terms of innovation, the ability to capture the trend of the times and the insight into the needs of users.

Zhang Ruimin proposed in 2007 that Haier is essentially the only competitor if it wants to be number one in the world.

"We have to take a completely different path from Whirlpool and Panasonic, and only by taking a different path from them, that is, the road of innovation, can we catch up with and surpass these rivals."

Haier is the first household appliance company in the world to launch an industrial Internet platform, and its COSMOPlat platform combines user personalized needs with assembly line production, increasing production efficiency by 60 per cent. In 2012, the system was launched earlier than Panasonic, Sharp, Hitachi and other brands to plan for transformation.

In the after-sales service and sales channels and other links, local brands have suffered a small loss in the past, but have never given up communication with users, stumbling to achieve today's results.

Take Midea as an example, the after-sales service system of air conditioners alone has completed many large-scale reforms in the past two decades. From the beginning by Neusoft to provide services, to the large-scale construction of offline outlets, and then to the launch of the headquarters-sub-center-network three-level after-sales system and a series of online auxiliary systems, it has become more convenient for users to apply for after-sales, and the operational efficiency of enterprises has also been improved.

Take history as a mirror to see the gains and losses. The lessons brought about by the decline of Japanese brands are naturally worthy of the attention of local brands.

Written in October last year, Toshiba Dalian Co., Ltd., which has a history of 30 years, officially announced the suspension of production and liquidation. Toshiba said in the announcement that the medical equipment and other businesses at the Dalian plant were also sold and that all production lines were shut down at the end of September.

Toshiba is not the first company, nor will it be the last Japanese brand to withdraw from the Chinese market completely. Brands that still have ambitions for the Chinese market, such as Panasonic, are actively saving themselves. But more brands can only be propped up and dying.

In any case, the decline of Japanese household appliance brands has become a fact, and it is difficult to reshape the glory of the past. However, the process of Japanese brands from rise to decline has left valuable experience and lessons for the industry, which is worth learning or warning from other peers.

Today, local brands still firmly occupy the dominant position in China's home appliance market, but Japanese brands should not be taken lightly. Only by always maintaining the ability of innovation, keeping up with the development trend of the times, and keeping close to the needs of users, can local brands have a truly bright future.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: Institute of value (ID:jiazhiyanjiusuo), author: Hernanderz

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