Research On Marketing Channel Selection And Improvement Of Household Air Conditioning

Television,refrigerator,washing machine,and the air conditioner(AC)has become necessities since the 1980 s.The household appliance industry in China has been mature under the economic globalization environment.There are two types of home air conditioner system: split type and central type.Because the split type AC system has no requirement for installation location and room height and is more flexible in placement,it is the mainstream choice for consumers.After the development of more than a decade,the AC industry has become one of the most market-oriented industries in China.Though the competition is intense,the three domestic brands,Gree,Midea,Haier,are still the most popular ones for consumers and have dominant market power.There has been a lot of entry and exit for the second-tier or third-tier brands.To have higher sales,firms fiercely compete on marketing channel.Replacing the traditional department store and small specialty store after expanding for more than ten years,wholesale chain-store such as Gome and Suning have become the platforms that every firm needs to rely on.To enlarge the room for further development,each firm has been actively trying to adjust their marketing channel to adapt to the change.However,due to the shock from the online retailer and structural change in distribution,both sales and number of customers for the wholesale chain-store have decreased.Low transaction volume along with increasing input become the major topic that each AC firm needs to deal with.Based on previous literature,I analyze the marketing channel for home air conditioner using DK as an example.Then,I identify the issues in channel management of DK and discuss the reason.Lastly,I propose the plan to optimize the DK channel plan and its maintenance procedure.Because of the practicability and applicability of the proposal,I believe it can be generalized to other firms.