Consumer appliances continued to see dynamic growth in 2011, which was mainly due to increasing disposable incomes and the impact of the government’s stimulus packages. Nevertheless, compared with 2010, 2011 witnessed relatively weaker volume growth, especially in the second half of the year, as the government’s stimulus packages partially ended at the end of 2011, which hurt a bit on overall volume growth of consumer appliances. According to Euromonitor International, in urban areas where penetration rates were already quite high, a large proportion of retail volume sales came from upgrading demand, whilst in rural areas demand was primarily dominated by first-time purchases because of low penetration, especially for small appliances. As a consequence, the rural market experienced much higher growth than cities, and is gradually becoming the main driver of growth in consumer appliances.