Philips drives meaningful, customer-focused innovation

Focusing on the China market

Philips invested heavily in the growing China market and made a strategic decision to position the country as its "home market" in 2010.

The decision generated a positive impact on the company's business operations as well as its strategic deployment of resources.

Consumer Lifestyle Greater China deepened its business penetration and its consumer insights in the country to satisfy their needs better and faster.

Wong said that, for instance, Philips established focus groups to identify and understand consumer needs and how customers use the company's products.

Philips also conducted tests to analyze user habits and trends.

"Philips is an active listener and a persistent explorer, and maintains the idea of people-oriented products in every innovation to ensure they will satisfy and work for consumers," said Wong.

"We have exhausted our means to gain a true picture of consumer needs, and these specific consumer insights are the basis for our meaningful innovations," he said.

As part of the company's strategy to make China its "home market", Philips relocated its upstream teams to Shanghai in 2011 to facilitate the "end-to-end" value chain. This strategy helped Philips develop more products that truly satisfy local consumer needs and bring them to the market at a faster pace.

With the advancement of the Internet and mobile technology, the world is becoming increasingly digital and connected.

As a result domestic appliance companies are increasingly shifting their focus from offline to online channels and from conventional to smart products.

Wong said that Philips was leading the digital trend and was making efforts to integrate its products with digital technologies.

Keeping abreast of digital trends

"We found that, influenced by the Internet and big data, a growing number of consumers tend to integrate their research and purchase behaviors across online and offline platforms, which we call the ROFO mode-research online/offline, purchase offline/online," he said.

"In addition, consumers will buy different products through different channels. Thus, the most appropriate mode for Philips is to carry out the Internet thinking through the end-to-end value chain which involves product design, pricing, promotion and sales to ensure the best product presented to consumers in the appropriate way," Wong concluded.

Proactively seeking strategic cooperation is also a crucial focus for Philips.

The company signed a deal with Alibaba Group earlier this year. With the help of their big data and e-commerce advantages, Philips could devote itself to creating intelligent, health focused products for Chinese consumers, said Wong.

Philips has also established itself as one of the first foreign brands to use Chinese e-business platforms by expanding its online sales channels and cooperating with Tmall, JD.com and Amazon during the past few years. Wong said "meaningful innovation" guided Philips through a decade of transformation and enabled it to evolve into a diversified, health and wellbeing company.

He said Philips understands the main global trends and challenges and cares if its technologies and innovations meet actual customer needs.

Philips Consumer Lifestyle expects to improve people's quality of life and contribute to more sustainable development through its localized insights and globalized strengths, according to the company.

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