Executive Q&A: With Maytag Buy, Whirlpool Is Awash in Sales
Haier is not nearly as significant as LG or Samsung. They've entered the "brown goods" market via Best Buy. I think LG is here for good. Ten years ago, it was difficult to make an entry. But globalization is real in the appliance industry. Whirlpool in Europe is the No. 3 or 4 brand. LG is there, too. And European companies like Bosch and Siemens are here, too, and they're very successful.
LG has introduced some interesting products, like a refrigerator with a TV in it and an Internet refrigerator with a computer. Do consumers really want that?
The TV fridge doesn't count as innovation. Innovation is something that satisfies a customer need. I don't think LG did much research to tell if people wanted a $7,000 fridge with a TV in it. There's no doubt LG has created a PR juggernaut. But I doubt they've brought that much to the marketplace. I don't think they've yet upped the ante on innovation. But they will. LG is a very good competitor. They're going to make us better.
So you're not going to build a refrigerator TV?
After LG's TV fridge came out, we did customer research, and we think that in the typical kitchen with a side-by-side fridge, there is probably no table right in front of the fridge. Most people have an island or put the fridge in a nook. We found people couldn't really see a TV on their fridge. But it is probably a neat idea.
So we went to our innovation folks and asked them, what if, instead of putting a TV in a refrigerator, you put it in a microwave? After about six months of work, they came up with a prototype. It was a microwave with a TV in the door. So we tested that. Research showed it's a good idea–but people want to see what's going on with their food in the microwave. So we added a closed-circuit camera that shows your food on a split screen.
You're kidding.
No. We showed it at the Kitchen & Bath Show. It got a lot of buzz. Now we're trying to figure out if we can bring it to market. We'll bring it to the Consumer Electronics Show in January. That will be the first time we've been there since 2000.
With so much new technology, what does your research show about how much consumers can absorb? Doesn't there come a point where they want stuff that is more simple, not more complicated?
The real space for innovation is in remote diagnostics. Kind of like OnStar. We can sell it as an insurance policy. If something goes wrong with a washer, we would have some way to understand it.
But you're right; people want features that they don't have to use if they don't want to. A front-loader washing machine can do almost anything, but most people don't want all that. And some new things will make life simpler. Imagine a microwave that knows how long, and exactly how, to cook food, which comes with an RFID tag.
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