By Dr Morten Boyer from GfK Australia

Major Domestic Appliances (MDA) are really in the spotlight at the moment, and for good reason. Whilst many industries have been doing it tough, MDA sales have remained buoyant. In fact, GfK data shows that the sector has delivered more revenue than any other within consumer durables since 2012.

So it is not surprising that many manufacturers and retailers are focusing more on MDA, and one of the most attractive product categories is refrigerators, which has the largest proportion of sales revenue (28 per cent share of MDA value in the year ending June 2013).

There are many ways to attract refrigerator consumers, but today we will focus on the power of brand loyalty. Creating loyal refrigerator customers has some inherent challenges, when compared against lower involvement categories such as groceries. ConsumerScope data show that 40 per cent of all refrigerator sales were “grudge” purchases, which means the most recent brand experience is likely to have been negative.

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In addition, replacement cycles are much longer (over 10 years), and people spend a lot of time contemplating and researching their selection. This means that buyers are more likely to choose their refrigerator independently of what happened the last time they bought one, because so much has changed since.

Consequently, only 20 per cent of refrigerator buyers are brand loyal, which is lower than all other ConsumerScope categories, including TVs (23 per cent), digital cameras (26 per cent), PCs (29 per cent), and mobile phones (36 per cent).

However, increased brand loyalty is still something worth aspiring to, especially since refrigerator brands have such a long time to entrench their relationship. Loyal refrigerator consumers are also twice as sticky, with 55 per cent saying they never switched their preferred brand throughout the entire decision-making process, compared with only 26 per cent for non-loyal buyers.

Some other key things that differentiate loyal refrigerator buyers are that they are more influenced by word-of-mouth, and over half of them really value after-sales service (62 per cent) as well as the reputation a brand may have in other categories (53 per cent).

Dr Morten Boyer is the general manager of Media and Market Insights at GfK Retail and Technology ANZ.