By Martin Vedris

SYDNEY, NSW: LG Electronics senior executives say that listening to customers is a vital part of the focus on building its premium brand image and developing new products like the SolarDOM and steam clothes washing machine. And the senior executives particularly value their meetings with Australian retailers.

Mathew Han, currently the LG Electronics senior general manager C&C Sales Management Team, worked at LG Australia from 1999 to 2003. He said that meetings with retailers are a vital part of the marketing and product development process.

“The Australian subsidiary, has a very successful marketing tool, which is a merchandising meeting with retail customers like Harvey Norman, Betta, NARTA, Bing Lee, et cetera,” said Mr Han.

“One of the most important things we hear from these meetings is to maintain product leadership.

“Through these merchandising meetings we do our best to find out what are the hidden needs of the customers and we try to incorporate these needs into the products.”

When it comes to promoting LG products in the Australian market, LG is focused on using consumer insights to develop the premium brand image and to determine the appropriate product unique sales propositions (USPs) for Australians.

“LG will continue to improve our premium brand image in the Australian market based on consumer insights,” said LG Electronics Asia Director, Home Appliance & Airconditioning, Mr Chang Hee Han.

“Australian consumers are highly interested in energy-saving functions and eco-friendly functions, so the USP of our products, for example, the linear compressor technology of our refrigerators, our washing machine has the Direct Drive Motor, our vacuum cleaners have compressors to compact the dust, and our air conditioners have inverter technology. So these energy-saving functions are USPs for the Australian market.”