Home appliances market to go up 10-15%

The polarisation on the home appliances market might become less visible this year on the account of the anticipated 10-15% growth in 2005. In the absence of a substantial growth of the market, the low and high-end products have prevailed lately, while the middle range products have seen lower demand. The various product categories witnessed regular wars among brands in an attempt to attain sales targets on a dwindling market. Their effects will best show this year, when the winners will grab a bigger slice of the expected market growth. “This was an infernal clash fought with prices and promotional offers from producers, which eventually led to changes of up to 2%-3% in the market shares of the various manufacturers,” said Lorand Szarvadi, general manager of Domo Retail, the company that owns Domo store chain. Moreover, says Ovidiu Bejan, marketing and sales manager of Genco Electric Romania, the price of the brand name products is dwindling. “The middle range definition has somehow vanished, with the branded products moving towards the middle-low and middle-expensive categories. The high-end products category was kept, obviously, which increased compared with last year. More precisely, we may say a price category repositioning occurred,” believes the official of Genco Electric Romania, an importer of Samsung products. ZF