Smart home market in Russia: An empirical study of consumer preferences

Abstract

The paper deals with the research of customer preferences in the context of smart home market. It is aimed at the identification of smart home market segments in Russia. Based on original combination of complex open information sources’ review, social networks and media scanning, brainstorming, focus-groups as well as consumer survey with the special interactive educating part at the beginning the authors made a research of Russian smart home market customer preferences in 2015–2016. The results indicate that there was an interest of potential customers to mass market customized systems uniting safety and remote control network devices. At the present day such systems correspond to Do-It-Yourself sets like EZVIZ or Life Control which are wireless and relatively cheap. This suggests that study findings had been proved and the authors’ approach relevance can be verified. Moreover, the study findings suggest that around 80–90 percent of potential smart home customers in Russia can be attracted with mass market orientation opposite to elite demand satisfaction. Such an orientation can be achieved through the technological typification. Also the authors found that the smart home installation services demand is likely to decrease in the coming years. All these findings can be used to formulate an optimal business strategy for gaining smart home market share when is driven by technologypush tendency instead of market-pull. The results will be also of interest to experts and scholars for improving methods of marketing research in the context of product (service) obscureness to potential customers.