”2017 Analysis on E-shopping for Home Appliances” issued jointly by CCID of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and China Electronics News shows that 3.74 million air purifiers have been sold out online in 2017, a 12% year-on-year increase, with turnover of RMB7 billion, increasing by 18%. However, online sales volume of high-margin products did not increase significantly even after price cut.

Consumers are more rational when shopping for air purifiers in 2018. Some air purifier brands can bring down the manufacturing costs further as they have strong control over the upstream chain (raw materials, etc.). Moreover, the strong intervention of internet service providers into the air purifier industry has played havoc with the original pricing system, resulting in further depression of average profit margin for the industry.

Prices of the products sold online are mainly ranging from RMB1,000 to RMB1,999 and RMB 2,000 to RMB3,499. Retail sales of products priced from RMB0 ~ 999 have gone up by nearly 30%, accounting for 10.28% of total retail sales of the whole year. In comparison, retail sales of RMB3,500 ~ 4,999 products only take up 10.81% of the year total with 12.1% increase whereas RMB5,000 ~ 6,999 product retail sales take up 6.98% with 25.2% decrease. Products sold at RMB7,000 or higher prices only take up 4.7% which was down 0.3%. RMB2,000 ~ 3,499 products are the most popular, indicating that consumers are more preferable to have higher price-ratio products. RMB1,000 ~ 1,999 products present huge market potential and will be the development focus of manufacturers.

Air purifier market now is not able to get rid of the state of “relying on the weather”. Product sales will come down significantly as weather gets better and market concern declines. In the future, with the implementation of related policies, such as “using gas instead of coal”, “using electricity instead of coal”, etc., there might be less haze weather. Air purifier industry should seek for new growth points to change things for the better.