| White Goods |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT MAJOR APPLIANCE | |
| electro mechanical engineering | |
| home appliances | |
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Major appliances are differentiated from Small Appliance s because they are large, difficult to move, and generally fixed in place to some extent. They may be roughly divided into Refrigeration equipment, Stove s, Washing equipment, and miscellaneous. TYPES OF APPLIANCES Appliances are divided into white goods and brown goods.
Brown goods were traditionally finished with wood, or looked like wood, or Bakelite ; at least televisions and music systems were. This is now rather rare, but the name has stuck, even for goods that are unlikely ever to have been provided in a wooden case (e.g. camcorders). White goods were typically painted or enamelled white, and many of them still are. The addition of new items to these categories shows that the categories still serve a purpose in Marketing (consumers rarely use the terms), perhaps because they divide into traditional Gender Roles in the house suggesting "gadget/novelty/power" marketing for brown goods and "practicality/reliability" marketing for white goods. This division is also noticeable in the service area of this kind of products. Brown goods usually require high technical knowledge and skills (which get more complex with time, such as going from a soldering iron to a hot-air soldering station), while white goods need more practical skills and "brute force" to manipulate the devices and heavy tools required to repair them. Brown goods are almost always serviceable down to "component-level" (integrated circuits, transistors, etc), whereas in white goods, usually whole modules (motor, thermostat, controller board) are changed and not repaired. There is usually a problem with microwave ovens, which are considered white goods, because these sell alongside refrigerators and dishwashers, but microwave ovens contain complex electronic boards (the clock and controller) which white-good servicemen refuse to repair (as they don't have the training or tools required to do so). Some brands consider microwave ovens white goods, and send whole boards for replacement, and some consider microwaves to be like brown goods, and have them repaired by such technicians. Personal care products (electric shavers and depilators), are considered a separate line, and usually are not serviced, but completely exchanged. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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