Product, management and marketing are still the old problems of independent brands

Last year, the sales data of the auto market was nearing the start of the furnace, and the growth rate of passenger cars was 5.19% better than the overall level of the auto market. However, there is still a big gap between the hot trend of the previous two years. Among them, the taste of the self-owned brand passenger car companies is the most complicated.

According to Dong Yang, Secretary-General of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the growth rate of self-owned brands is high when the market is good, and the self-owned brands are the fastest falling companies when the market is bad.

A set of data proves this. Last year, a total of 6,112,200 self-owned brand passenger vehicles were sold, a decrease of 2.56% year-on-year (excluding exports, internal sales fell 5.42% year-on-year), accounting for 42.23% of total passenger car sales, share decline rate of 3.37 percentage points from the same period last year.

The market of small-displacement vehicles with relatively concentrated self-owned brand products was affected by the policies last year and fluctuate greatly. Last year, sales of passenger cars with 1.6 liters and below were 9.983 million vehicles, an increase of 4.00% year-on-year, which was lower than the growth rate of passenger cars by 1.19 percentage points, accounting for 67.99% of the total amount of passenger cars, a decrease of 0.78 percentage points from the same period of last year.

The market share of self-owned brands in 2011 was swallowed up by joint-venture brand companies. Among the joint ventures, the share of Ashkenazim increased significantly. Zhu Yiping, Assistant Secretary General of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, said that from the perspective of the growth of passenger cars in different departments, the German, U.S., and Korean still maintained double-digit growth, with German growth reaching 20%, while the legal system and Japanese system multiply. The use of cars fell back to single-digit levels; from the perspective of market share, the German share increased by 2.12 percentage points year-on-year, and the Japanese market declined.

Shen Jun, vice president of Greater China of Roland Berger International Management Consulting (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., analyzed at the “2012 China Automotive Market Research Summit Forum” that the issue of self-owned brands was product issues first, followed by management issues, and finally, marketing issues. .

"Now is precisely over-marketing, for consumers, over-promising in the consumption process, but it does not come true, this is also a problem." Shen Jun made it clear.

The self-owned brand currently accounts for nearly 30% of the total automobile market sales in China, while the sales gross profit only accounts for 10%, which means that the profitability of self-owned brands has not been effectively improved.

The state-owned auto group that owns the joint venture has earned enough money last year because of its profits from its highly profitable joint venture. According to statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers on the economic benefits of the 17 key enterprise groups in the automotive industry, the key indicators of the key enterprises in the automotive industry in the first 11 months of last year all showed a certain degree of growth.

To a certain extent, domestic private auto companies are more able to represent the survival status of auto brands. In the past year, the status of private auto companies was uneven.

According to data from the National Passenger Vehicles Association, in 2011, the cumulative sales of Great Wall Motors totaled 490,000 vehicles, an increase of 22.5% year-on-year. According to an official statement from Geely Automobile, Geely’s own brand sales in 2011 were “not less than 430,000 units, with a year-on-year increase of no less than 4%”.

Of course, there are also unsatisfactory businesses. Due to the excessive expansion of the dealer network, BYD’s sales have plummeted. Chery Automobile sold a total of 643,000 vehicles throughout the year. There is still a big gap between the sales of 800,000 vehicles from the beginning of the year.

The problems covered by rapid growth in the past have slowly emerged at a time when the growth of the auto market has slowed down and have changed to become the only way out for self-owned brands.

Zhao Xinzhi, deputy director of automotive research at Nielsen in China, believes that in the phase of market transition, independent brands should learn how to find new blue oceans, realize value innovation, reposition existing markets, reorganize brands and product elements, and thus cut consumer demand.