As consumers prepare for a shopping extravaganza this festive season, consumer durable companies are also gearing up fast. With mounting demand from big home appliances, Toshiba Home Appliances expects 40 per cent of this year's total sales from washing machines, dishwashers, washer dryers and refrigerators from this festive season.
The major trends that Toshiba Home Appliances have witnessed are the evolving consumer buying behaviour, preferring bigger capacity washing machines and refrigerators, while also remaining design and environment-conscious. Some of our most popular SKUs are Toshiba top-loading front-loading models starting from 7 kg up to 9 Kg capacity. As the semiconductor shortage has started impacting the consumer durable segment, Toshiba Home Appliances says it anticipated the festive demand and stocked up the inventory in advance. As most of our Toshiba home appliances are imported from the Toshiba Thailand factory, we maintain more than two months' inventory keeping in mind the shipping lead time and the seasonal demand for each category in the year, explains Mohanty.
As the industry is on the road to recovery, consumers are more impulsive in their purchases and are limiting themselves to more planned purchases than planned ones. Consumer preference is more towards easy finance schemes and even Toshiba Home Appliances has floated a variety of offers, including easy finance schemes through easy EMI, in both paper finance and credit card purchase, cashback offers, additional warranty for washing machine range, and free dishwasher tablets.
Started operations only in January 2020, the company claims to have steered through the global pandemic and has managed to achieve 50 per cent growth year-to-date over last year. As online purchases ballooned as the new-normal, another trend we witnessed is the growing preference of a large-format retail store as the point of purchase. Customers can compare and see a wide variety of products and services to make an informed choice. Along with major retail partners, we have consolidated our presence with large retail partners, taking our footprint to over 2000 retail stores, adds Mohanty. Toshiba Home Appliances are available in offline and online channels with all the products listed on all major e-commerce platforms.
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