Source: CHEAA-run China Appliance magazine

White Paper on the Trends of Health-oriented Home Appliances in China 2022, developed by China Appliance magazine (run by CHEAA) and 1SAR, was released on July 28, 2022.

From individual products to scenarios

The white paper divides the health-oriented home scenarios into healthy air, healthy laundry, healthy water use, healthy kitchen, healthy cleaning and healthy personal care. It also points out some health-oriented trends of the current home appliance market.

Chen Li, Vice Secretary General of China Household Electrical Appliances Association (CHEAA) and Chief Editor of China Appliance magazine, says, “We did a similar roundup back in 2020 and found that, at that time, enterprises’ focus was mainly on individual products. They added health-oriented functions to traditional home appliances or rolled out health-oriented products to meet the booming market demands. But this year, we find that home appliance enterprises, especially the leading players, have started to establish home scenarios. The health-oriented trend is updating from the development of individual products to the establishment of scenarios.”

Home air scenarios

The white paper believes that the establishment of a healthy home air scenario should consider four aspects: temperature, humidity, air purity and air comfortableness. “Each aspect used to be the key function of a certain product. For instance, temperature points to air conditioner, humidity to humidifier, and air purity to air purifier. But now, the four aspects are getting integrated into one product. That is the air conditioner. Air conditioner is becoming the core manager of the air quality of a household.” Chen Li says.

Laundry scenarios

Chen Li points out that the technical innovations made to washing machines and the fast expansion of dryers after the outbreak of the Covid-19 were closely related to consumers’ rising healthcare demands. The white paper also attests to her points. Online market research shows that health-related words such as self-cleaning, high-temperature, bacterial removing are frequently found on the sales pages of washing machines and more than 70% of them boast their health-related functions or technologies.

It’s worth noting that dual-load washing machines that are capable of washing two loads of clothes in separate compartments have gained increasing traction as it truly targets consumers’ pain points and meets their needs which is to wash clothes of different people, materials, colors separately. Plus, the integration of clothes washing, drying, and caring is also a future trend. The industry will put more efforts into premium fabric care and will join hands with detergent manufacturers to develop possible solutions.

Home water use scenarios

The white paper divides home water use scenarios into drinking scenarios and water using scenarios. In drinking scenarios, Chinese households go beyond drinking water safety to pursue warm purified drinking water as well as healthier drinking water. In water using scenarios, the concept of a healthy shower is driving water heater industry to update. Whole house water purification is a future trend.

“The overall technical upgrading trend is from safety to healthiness.” Chen Li says, “The drinking scenarios and the water use scenarios will be integrated as a system to meet people’s needs of healthy home water use.”

Kitchen scenarios

“Kitchen is the food factory in a household that involves scenarios including food storage, cooking, kitchen environment keeping, and dishware cleaning.” Chen Li says.

Food storage is the function of refrigerators. Healthiness has always been a key focus of refrigerator R&D. The pandemic drives up the food storage needs of households. Plus, niche markets are tapped into to meet the demands of certain consumer groups with products designed for baby and mother use and products designed to store skincare products and cosmetics rolled out.

Smart cooking technologies and healthy food recipes loaded in cooking appliances provide a foundation for health management. Plus, the microwave oven and steam oven combos are expanding fast in Chinese market as people’s healthcare awareness rise. The popularity of air fryers and electric grills is also a testament to the health-oriented trend of China’s home appliance industry.

To build a healthy kitchen environment, enterprises have started to deploy technologies and products. For a range hood, the extraction performance is not the only thing that matters. Low noise is also a key indicator. The white paper shows that nearly half of the products on the market use low noise as a key selling point.

The pandemic drives up the sales of dishwashers, disinfection cabinets, chopstick disinfection machines and cutting board disinfection machines, of which dishwashers particularly stood out. It’s worth noting that new models on the market show an overall upgrade which is the bacteriostatic storage function and the disinfection function. Enterprises have been combining the disinfection function and storage function into dishwashers to strengthen its health orientation.

Home cleaning scenarios

The home cleaning scenarios have transitioned from the traditional “vacuum cleaner + manual work” pattern to a whole system that covers handheld wireless vacuum cleaner, wet and dry vacuum cleaner, vacuum cleaning robot and dust mite controller.

Personal care scenarios

Personal care appliances spring up in recent years such as electric toothbrush, oral irrigator, facial instrument, smart toilet seat, smart massaging machine and wearable health monitoring device, offering a convenient health management experience to consumers.

Chen Li says, “The personal care scenarios have not been completely developed. The prospect is promising. A lot of personal care products have been equipped with smart functions such as smart toilet seat, massaging machine, wearable devices and body fat scale. They act as a health data collector and provide a foundation for personal health care management.”

Aside from the six scenarios, the health orientation is also shown in the development of common technologies. Disinfection and bacteriostatic performance have been a key health orientation of home appliances. Bacteriostatic materials such as copper have been widely applied to home appliance products such as refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, water heaters and kitchen appliances to power the health-oriented upgrade of the industry.

Future trend: whole-process health management

China’s home appliance industry grasps the opportunity to deploy health-related home scenarios through the upgrade of traditional products and the innovations of products and technologies to meet consumers’ growing health-oriented needs.

Next step will be the establishment of a system. Chen Li says, home appliance enterprises will build a smart, complete, personalized health management flow to connect scenarios in a smart home. “To achieve this goal, we need to embrace the smart era, to cooperate with smart management bodies and use their knowledge to equip a smart home. In this way, we offer valuable services to our users. We look forward to that day.” She says.