In case you missed it, we recently published the results of our 2020 Aga Range Cooker Owners survey(better late than never!) following the success of our 2019 survey. Afterwards, we released our 2021 survey, with new questions and more options. The results flew in! It was reassuring and really exciting to see so many of you getting involved.
As with most years, we don’t expect to see too much change. We all know Aga's have long lives, and often don't need much improvement (after all, it's hard to improve on the perfect cooker...).
With the issues we face going forward with rising fuel prices, we wanted to focus an entire section on the choice of electric Aga's, and the options that are available to range cooker owners.
Either by converting to our Electrikit, or by purchasing a refurbished electric range over a new one, range cooker owners have more options than ever to choose a more environmentally (and wallet) friendly option. This also comes with the added bonus of potentially running on 100% clean energy (depending on your energy provider, of course).
On top of this, our Electrikit system allows you to have more control over the temperature of your cooker, meaning it doesn't need to be running 24/7. This means it can be much more affordable to run compared to a gas, oil or solid fuel range cooker. With this in mind, it's great to see that 23.7% of people have converted their Aga cooker from either oil, gas or solid fuel to a new electric system.
At another point within the survey, we asked if anyone had a conventional oven or hob in their kitchen as well as a range cooker - the results were surprising. A staggering 45% of the people we asked have an additional conventional oven in their kitchen, and a further 47% have a conventional hob in their kitchen! We don’t have any other data to compare this to, but we’ll be keeping an eye on these figures as we release more surveys in the future.
We also asked about the very important job of servicing your Aga range cooker - something that should be done at least once a year (depending on your fuel type). We found that an astonishing 22% of the people asked service their own Aga range cooker! Whilst it is possible to service your own range cooker, we always recommend contacting your local service engineer who will be able to help. If you aren’t sure where to find a service engineer, we have a useful Service Engineer Directory page where you can find all the information you need to find one.
There were also a number of noticeable changes compared to our 2020 and 2019 surveys and the results from the new 2021 survey that can’t go unmentioned. As seen in our 2020 results, we’re seeing a shift away from traditional colours such as Cream and British Racing Green. We’ve recently seen a huge change in the colour trends in the last 2 years, meaning many of you are becoming braver with the colour choices you have in your home (we love this!). It seems that the kitchen is becoming the focal point of everyone's homes, with the range cooker being the star of the show.
Sadly, there were some changes in the data that wasn't as positive as the rest of the survey. We have seen a small change in people that are happy to recommend an Aga Range Cooker, alongside a small shift in kerb appeal, with 78% of people who answered saying that they would buy a home with an Aga range cooker, and 73% saying they think a range cooker adds value to their home.
Additionally, we noticed that there was a change in when we're seeing people turn their range cookers off - 2021's results show this happening much earlier, with 18% of people now turning their cooker off in April, and 33% turning it off in May.
There are many variables for why we are seeing these shifts in behaviour. It’s been a tricky year, with a lot of changes - namely the changing prices of fuel, leading to increased running costs for range cookers.
Other factors could also include the shift of more people working remotely, as well as the long, cold winter that we had last year (followed swiftly by a warm, hot summer). Do you think that this has played a part in the change of opinion towards owning an Aga range cooker?
You can see all the survey results below.
Finally, we also received some suggested questions, which we thought were great. Instead of asking how much you pay to run your Aga, we could ask how many litres of fuel is used (this can also apply to kWh and how much gas is used). The second suggestion was to ask how long you have had an Aga range cooker (are you an experienced user or new to range cooker life?).
If you have any other suggestions for this, please let us know and we will include them in next year's survey!
