About Consumer Lifestyle

The Philips Consumer Lifestyle sector is organized around its markets, customers and consumers, with its businesses focused on value creation through category development, and its functions concentrating on value delivery through operational excellence.

The market-driven approach is applied with particular emphasis at local level, enabling Consumer Lifestyle to address a variety of market dynamics and allowing the sales organizations to operate with shorter lines of communication with the sector’s six businesses. This also promotes customer-centricity in day-to-day operations.  

In 2009 the sector consisted of the following areas of business:

• Television – experience television (including the 2009 Aurea and Ambilight range and the Cinema 21:9 model, the world’s first cinema-proportioned LCD television that gives true cinematic viewing in the home) plus lifestyle television
• Shaving & Beauty – electric shavers, female depilation appliances, haircare and male grooming products, vitality solutions and skincare
• Audio & Video Multimedia – home and portable audio and video entertainment, including Blu-ray Disc playback, MP3 and MP4 players, and docking stations for portable entertainment devices
• Domestic Appliances – kitchen appliances, floor care, garment care, water and air purifiers, beverage appliances. In 2009 this area of business was considerably strengthened through the acquisition of Saeco International Group S.p.A. of Italy, making Philips a global leader in coffee machines
• Health & Wellness – oral healthcare, mother and childcare, relationship care
• Peripherals & Accessories – mobility accessories (including headphones, portable audio accessories), remote controls, PC peripherals, digital picture frames, audio and video communications (including DECT and VoIP digital cordless phones).

We also partner with leading companies from other fields, such as Sara Lee/Douwe Egberts and Nivea Beiersdorf, in order to deliver customer-focused appliance/consumable combinations. Consumer Lifestyle has continued its business with international key accounts, particularly in emerging markets. The introduction of more ‘flagship’ online stores for our products has added further key touch-points to the consumer brand experience.  

We offer a broad range of products from high to low price/value quartiles, necessitating a diverse distribution model that includes mass merchants, retail chains, independents and small specialty stores often represented by buying groups, as well as online retailers and distributors/wholesalers.  

Under normal economic conditions, the Consumer Lifestyle business experiences seasonality, with higher sales in the fourth quarter resulting from the holiday sales.

Consumer Lifestyle employs approximately 18,400 people worldwide. This increase on the 2008 level of 17,000 was mainly due to the acquisition of Saeco, which brought around 2,000 new employees – and a lot of valuable experience and expertise – to our sector. Our global sales and service organization covers more than 50 mature and emerging markets. In addition, we operate manufacturing and business creation organizations in the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Austria, Hungary, Singapore, Argentina, Brazil and China.

Consumer Lifestyle strives for full compliance with relevant regulatory requirements.

With regard to sourcing, please refer to the section Supply management under Performance by key function.