“We sell emotion…a life change”: Why consumers still go in-store to buy their kitchen

Chair: Smart Kitchen Summit Founder Mike Wolf, Panelists: Elkjop Sales Director Martin Jensen, Nobia Marketing Director Charlotte Wessman and Electrolux Business Area Europe Sales Director Chris Braam

We’re running a series of stories all week to highlight what we learnt from our recent ‘Future Kitchen’ event. We invited food, kitchen and tech industry leaders to our headquarters to look deeper into the digital technologies, business models and societal shifts changing how the consumer eats, buys, stores and prepares food.

Highlight four

Despite the growth of ecommerce, experiential retail will be an important part of the consumer’s kitchen purchase journey going forward to enable them to ‘touch and feel’ products, as buying a kitchen is a high-involvement, emotional purchase.

“We don’t just sell appliances. We sell emotion. Many times we sell a life change,” said Nobia Marketing Director Charlotte Wessman while debating The Smart Kitchen in the Retail Environment.

The panel warned of the disconnect between selling kitchens and technology which are moving at different speeds, and the importance of helping consumers understand how smart kitchens can benefit them in their everyday life.

Electrolux Business Area Europe Sales Director Chris Braam explained: “If you just enable a product and say ‘now it’s smart’ – that’s not what we do. We want to solve pain points. Technology for example enables you to have your boiling water never boil over again. A hob can do that… We need to have active appliances (in store) and take the consumer on a journey to show the benefits.”

The idea of a new business model going forward that would enable consumers to rent what they want was also raised: “Do you want to own or do you want to use?” asked Braam.

Stay tuned for our fifth and final highlight tomorrow on our Future Kitchen event