Smart home education enters UK retail market

Last week John Lewis, one of the UK’s leading retail chains, claims that it has opened the UK’s largest smart home high street shopping experience, writes Olena Kaplan a senior analyst at Beecham Research. The retailer allocated part of its 5th floor electronics space to smart home products at its flagship Oxford Street store.

John Lewis’ smart home space is divided into areas imitating a household in order for shoppers to understand how smart devices can be used in a home setting. The kitchen space demonstrates the smart oven by AIG which can be controlled and viewed from a tablet, there is a smart fridge by Samsung, a smart washing machine, and smart coffee machine while a multi room media system is demonstrated by Sonos. The majority of these smart home products are connected and can be tried with a help of sales personnel.

In the bedroom area the shopper can examine sleep tracker, Philips smart lighting and Sonos’ speakers. The living room offers a combination of smart TV and Sonos home cinema sound bar with additional speakers, together with Phillips smart lighting, which aim to enhance user experience. The living room space also brings some attention to Logitech’s smart home harmony remote which enables the control of all smart home products from one remote control. Amongst other devices that this retailer brings to smart home consumers attention are Netatmo home security camera and weather stations plus the Google Nest smart home thermostat.

Visiting the showroom I noticed that consumers demonstrate a healthy interest in the new generation products. Setting up the space to mimic a household had significantly improved the general reception of smart home goods. It is clearly observed in comparison to the general smart home appliances stock display located just around the corner to the showroom itself. This proves that at this early stage of this market development lack of understanding by the majority of consumers of the specific benefits of these goods is the major barrier for their adoption.

The in-store experience remains crucial when it comes to products that a consumer has not had a chance to experience before. This demonstration space is a great first step however there are still a number of things that can be improved. For example; Phillips lighting is set in different rooms at a different colour, which is great to inform the consumer that they offer alternative colours to white or yellow, but it does not clearly demonstrate that a consumer can set it up and change the options at any point in time. Nor that it can be pre-set depending on what the resident would like to do within the home. A number of devices while being there are not fully connected therefore a shopper cannot fully experience the benefit of it.

The Netatmo is one of them. While the stand explains what it is meant to do … the shopper cannot view it in a working state. Therefore the consumer will ask “What difference to my home security does this camera station bring” and is left pondering what this product will do in a real home? Looking at the full smart home range that John Lewis offers I noticed that only some products were chosen for the showroom. Of course some of the product that are available on the market and sold within one store are in direct competition to one other. Nonetheless, demonstrating next to each other would not take much extra space, at this stage of the market, and would offer the consumer a valuable experience to make a decision over which brand suits them better. Having a Hive thermostat next to the Google Nest thermostat would provide a clear understanding of the difference between them as well as provide the chance for a consumer to decide which they prefer ergonomically.

There is no doubt that the John Lewis’ Oxford Street smart home showroom is a great way forward to bring smart home devices to our everyday home experience. The retailer aims to roll out a similar experience in other stores nationwide with the Leeds store being scheduled for autumn 2016. Such an example is likely to be followed by other retailers, which may just make 2016 the year that smart home devices enter the UK’s mass market.