Following the introduction of Peugeot Citroen, Renault, Land Rover and Jaguar in 2012, the largest-selling Volkswagen in China has also taken a step in channel integration under the premise that the sales of imported cars are not optimistic – Shanghai Volkswagen has been selling exclusive Volkswagen Sharan models since February 1, 2015.
In fact, driven by the gradual return of automobile sales and the parallel import policy of the country, the independent import vehicle sales channel once in China is moving towards a new round of integration, gradually completing a phase from integration to re-entering. course.
Import and domestic car sales channel integration has become a trend Nandu reporter recently learned from Shanghai Volkswagen that Shanghai Volkswagen VW brand imported car business has made new progress: since February 1, 2015, Shanghai Volkswagen has obtained the import of Sharan For exclusive sales rights in the domestic market, consumers can purchase MPV Sharan at any of the Shanghai Volkswagen VW brand dealers, and the imported Volkswagen dealer will no longer sell Sharan after digesting the stock.
Putting aside the joint letter issued by Volkswagen China dealers because of poor earnings, it is not entangled in the arduous negotiations between the importing public and Shanghai Volkswagen in the three rounds of "needle-to-mansions". In fact, imported cars are integrated into the joint venture channel, and the importing public is no longer the first. One.
As early as May 2014, Renault announced that Renault China and Dongfeng Renault had started team integration, and Renault's imported car business will also be allocated to the Dongfeng Renault joint venture. Although Renault China will continue to exist after the establishment of Dongfeng Renault, market sales and service functions have been transplanted to the joint venture company. Chen Hao, senior director of sales and marketing at Renault China, said, “This strategic thinking has created a new benchmark in the Chinese automotive industry. ."
Along with the development of multinational auto giants in China, the network of imported cars in China also shows the status of “combined--------â€. "Under the current Chinese automobile market environment, the integration of foreign automobile brand import channels and domestic automobile sales channels has become an irreversible trend." Zhang Zhiyong, an analyst in the automotive industry, said.
At the end of the last century, as the planned economy transitioned to the market economy, foreign-invested companies began to pay attention to the sales of cars and the layout of channels. However, due to the large proportion of imported cars, foreign companies are not willing to assign the sales rights of imported products to the channels of the joint venture company. Therefore, the imported products were mainly sold in China in their own separate channels.
However, with the continuous development of the market, the proportion of domestically produced vehicles is increasing, and the proportion of imported cars is becoming smaller and smaller. In the gradual shrinking of the foreign-branded imported car market, taking the domestic automobile product channel as the core, integrating domestic and foreign channels into one has become an important direction in the transformation of foreign-funded channels. And high-end cars, including Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Cadillac, etc., have already achieved domestic and imported grid-connected sales.
Advancing in the integration adjustment In June 2012, Peugeot Citroen Group agreed to open the imported car business to Shenlong Automobile. Dongfeng Citroen and Dongfeng Peugeot dealers can sell imported PSA models after passing the qualification review. The imported models can also be repaired and maintained in the joint venture company's dealerships. The reason is that with the Peugeot Citroen Group's performance in Europe frustrated, China's market position has been rapidly improved, Peugeot Citroen has to decentralize the import car business, leveraging the sales channels of the joint venture company to increase the sales of imported cars.
At the beginning of 2014, Chery Automobile and Jaguar Land Rover, which originally had their own sales channels, also announced that they will fully integrate the existing dealer network in the future, and Chery Jaguar Land Rover will launch all models in the Chinese market, and will sell in the same channel in the future. And after sales service.
"From a market point of view, and sales to a network is a general trend, but in fact, online sales is a very complicated matter, which involves a variety of interests that need to be coordinated." Senior car analyst clock The division said.
At the end of 2011, the period of the best performance of the imported car market, Su Weiming, vice president of Volkswagen China, put forward the strategy of “100,000 vehiclesâ€. As a result, since 2012, the imported car business has declined steadily, and the sales target has not been completed for three consecutive years. In order to promote the sales of imported cars, Volkswagen China and Shanghai Volkswagen reached a strategic cooperation agreement in 2013, authorizing Shanghai Volkswagen to sell some Volkswagen imported cars.
However, due to the long-standing price confusion problem in the public imported cars, Shanghai Volkswagen dealers have even tried to make tying tricks in the terminal market in order to complete the sales task of imported cars issued by the headquarters. Send Polo" and so on. And because the number of Volkswagen import dealers is far less than Shanghai Volkswagen, in Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Sichuan and other places, even the exclusive authorization of a dealer is used. With the addition of more than 100 stores in Shanghai Volkswagen to the sales of the five imported models of Beetle, Scirocco, Touareg, Maitewei and Sharan, as well as the comprehensive promotion of after-sales service, the days of Volkswagen's imported car dealers have changed. It is very difficult.
Therefore, one year after the implementation of the program, Volkswagen China took an inventory, the sales of imported cars in China was only 81,000 (including Shanghai Volkswagen sales of 9000), compared with the 83,000 in 2013. At the same time, the volatility of the mass import distributors submitted a joint letter to the Volkswagen China Sales Co., Ltd. through the Federation: canceled the sales rights of the imported Volkswagen dealers of Shanghai Volkswagen dealers, and subsidized the current situation of dealer losses in 2014.
Active change in a passive environment Under internal pressure, Volkswagen China had to reopen negotiations with Shanghai Volkswagen and move forward in adjustment.
Some insiders pointed out that the on-grid sales of joint-venture vehicles and imported cars can be described as the “active†improvement of the 4S shop business model by the manufacturers – to reduce the operating costs and to sell the imported cars through the resources of the existing 4S stores. Behind this change is also closely related to the current sluggish import vehicle sales environment, and the current Ministry of Commerce is leading the revision of the new "Automobile Brand Sales Management Implementation Measures."
In fact, from the perspective of the automobile policy environment, this year, the revised “Automobile Brand Sales Management Implementation Measures†has opened up a channel for unauthorized sales. Parallel imported cars have also been officially acquired as one of the important ways of unauthorized operation. Legal status. At the beginning of 2015, the Shanghai Free Trade Zone parallel import pilot officially started to run this good news. At present, a number of automobile groups including the huge group, Yaxia Automobile, and Guanghui Group have begun to prepare for this business. With the development of this business, the price advantage brought by parallel imports will undoubtedly bring certain impact on the authorized import vehicle channels.
In addition, the future import car 3C certification will have fuel consumption standards, three guarantees policy, recall and other policies, in order to regulate the operation of imported car business will also have a certain impact on its imports.
From the perspective of the objective market environment, the downturn in the imported car market has already begun in 2014. Statistics from China's imported automobile market database show that although China's imported car sales increased by 13.2% in 2014, the growth rate showed a monthly decline. Among them, the sales volume of imported cars in November fell by 6.6% year-on-year; Maintaining high-level operation, the imported car inventory at the end of last year not only hit a new high in recent years, but also the price drop was the highest in the past years.
Market analysts expect that China's imported car market is likely to show a single-digit growth in 2015, entering the inventory adjustment period, and the growth rate has dropped to a new low in the past five years. In this context, the gradual importation of imported cars with domestically produced vehicles has also become a major trend.
Sellers Union Group , https://www.sellersuniongroups.com