We at MySmartPrice, the leading gadget research website across various categories, continue to dive deeper into the ever-evolving trends in consumer behaviour, buying patterns, and more. With the Home Appliance Satisfaction Study 2024, we aim to look at the home appliances category closely.
Today, we will discuss various trends in the Air Conditioner category based on the survey responses from more than 10,000 participants. We asked the people various questions about their Air Conditioners, such as which brand they’re using, how long they have been using their current AC, how satisfied they’ve been with it, if they would repurchase an AC from the same brand, and much more. Let’s talk about what we found out through this extensive research where we dissect the AC category in India, based on the insights from the MySmartPrice Home Appliance Satisfaction Study 2024.
Ownership Trends in Air Conditioners
Blue Star and LG are the most popular air conditioner brands
- The first thing we asked the people in the survey was which air conditioner brand they were using.
- Blue Star is the most popular AC brand with a 19.5% market share. LG comes close second at 18.6% market share. Both brands have almost similar market share and are much higher than the third biggest brand.
- The third biggest brand is Samsung with a 10% market share.
- The fourth and fifth brands have similar market share, Haier at 6.4% and Croma at 6.3%.
Window ACs are still the most preferred type of AC in the country
- There are two types of air conditioners – Split and Window ACs. We asked the people which type they were using.
- While split ACs have started to pick steam, a majority of the people still use Window ACs.
More than one-third of the people bought their ACs in the last year
- We asked the people about when they bought their air conditioners.
- More than one-third of people surveyed, 38.6% of people bought their AC less than a year ago.
- 23.8% of people bought their AC between 1 to 3 years and 14% of the people bought it between 3 to 5 years. This indicates the market is still growing and more and more consumers will be looking buy an AC as the summer season arrives.
Buying Trends in ACs
Almost 80% of people bought their ACs from offline stores
- We asked the respondents an important question: where did they buy their air conditioner? The answers are interesting to look at.
- ~80% of people bought their ACs from offline stores.
- Traditional e-commerce stores like Amazon and Flipkart trail behind online brand stores like Samsung.com, Panasonic store, etc. 11.1% of the people bought their ACs from online brand stores while 9.2% of people bought from E-commerce stores.
Almost 70% of people have some kind of protection plan for their ACs
- Having a protection plan is important, and we asked the people about that. Most people, almost 70% have either a damage protection plan, extended warranty plan, or AMC.
- 35.3% of the people have extended warranty plans for their ACs. 21% of people surveyed said that they have an AMC plan for their ACs, while 11.3% said they have a damage protection plan.
- However, almost one-third of the people said that they don’t have any kind of protection plan for their ACs.
After-sales Trends in ACs
Blue Star users are the most satisfied with their ACs
- One of the biggest metrics in this survey is customer satisfaction. To gauge the same, we asked people if they were satisfied with their air conditioners.
- Blue Star is ranked the highest with 93.67% of its users satisfied with their purchase.
- It is quickly followed by Whirlpool at 92.68%, then Voltas at 90.24%.
Hitachi users faced the least issues with their ACs
- We also asked the people if they faced any issues with their ACs.
- Hitachi came on top of the list as 58.49% of the brand’s users said that they did not face any issues with their air conditioners.
- Mitsubishi and TCL share the #2 position in this chart, with 57.14% of people saying that they didn’t face any issues with Mitsubishi and TCL ACs.
It’s the easiest to complain with O General service center
- People also answered about the ease of complaining with the service center for various brands.
- O General came first, with 86.49% of people saying that it is easy to lodge a service complaint with the brand.
- It was closely followed by Videocon with 85.71% of respondents mentioning that it’s easy to complain about the issues.
Blue Star has the best technician response time
- We then asked the people about the technician’s response time. We ranked the brands according to the percentage of people saying that the technicians visited within 1 day of raising a complaint.
- Blue Star ranks first here, with 52.45% of people saying that technicians visited within 1 day of raising a complaint.
- O General comes second with 51.35% and Carrier the third with 47.76%.
Panasonic has the highest percentage of users saying that their technicians are competent
- We further asked people whether they thought the technicians of the AC brands they own were competent or not.
- Panasonic got the highest no of user votes with 53.85% of the people saying that the technician was competent.
- Interestingly, it drops down to 46.34% for the second brand, for Voltas. Blue Star is in third place with 43.86% users rating its service technicians as competent.
Voltas has the best after-sales service and support
- One of the most important metric when looking to buy a new AC is which is the best brand with after-sales service and support.
- In this aspect, Voltas ranks first with 80.49% of people being satisfied with its after-sales service and support.
- Toshiba comes second with 77.21% and Mitsubishi third with 76.19% of people rating their service support as satisfactory.
Blue Star enjoys the highest customer loyalty, followed by Voltas
- Another important factor to understand how the brand is faring is customer loyalty.
- Blue Star has the most loyal users, as 73.96% are likely to buy from Blue Star again.
- Voltas comes second, with 73.17% of users likely to buy from it again. Interestingly, the third is Croma, another Tata-owned brand, with 72.95% of people saying that they’re likely to buy from them again.
We hope you were able to get an in-depth look at what’s happening with the AC category in India. Do let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
