The proliferation of Corona19 will limit the distribution of home appliances offline stores, and the proportion of online purchases will likely increase. Accordingly, it is forecasted that demand for large-scale home appliances, which require face-to-face installation, will be slower than that of small-scale home appliances that can be purchased on a non-face-to-face basis.

According to the industry on the 24th, corona 19, offline stores in the United States and European consumer electronics stores are closing, but online shopping malls continue to operate.

Best Buy, the largest consumer electronics retailer in the United States, said on the 22nd (local time) on its official homepage, “We are going to stop operating offline stores due to concerns about customer and employee safety.” Installation and repairs are also discontinued. ”

Best Buy, however, plans to continue online sales. Instead, non-face-to-face delivery means employees leave home appliances at the door. In the case of home appliances that are essential to installation, it is difficult to purchase even if you want to purchase the product.

An industry insider said, “Best buy-in offline store operations may be disrupted by domestic home appliance makers operating overseas, but as the proportion of online sales in the US is increasing, we need to watch more.”

The domestic consumer electronics market also saw an increase in online purchasing due to the influence of Corona19.

According to market research firm GfK, the share of online purchases in the consumer electronics market soared to 65% in the week of February 17-23, when the number of confirmed positives in Korea increased significantly, while offline was only 35%. The next week, 61.7% of online and 38.3% of offline recorded an overwhelming increase in the online dependence of the consumer electronics market after the Corona 19 crisis.

Kang Jung-hyun, senior researcher at Euromonitor, said, “Even if the increase in online sales offsets the decrease in offline sales, the total sales of the home appliance market will decrease. It is expected to decrease. ”

In fact, according to G-Market, the sales volume of representative home appliances air conditioners decreased 28% in the last month (2/24 ~ 3/23). During the same period, the capsule coffee machine increased by 88% and the robot cleaner increased by 31%. Refrigerators grew only 2%.

“There is a possibility that sales of small household appliances will increase as consumers spend more time eating at home,” said Kang Jeong-hyeon. ”