Cheng Yuan: "Automotive Network Marketing Mode" We are optimistic about its success

Recently, the purchase of water for auto trading has made a lot of money. On September 9th, Taobao performed the “Best Cow Online Group Purchase Transaction in History”. In just 3 hours and 28 minutes, 200 Mercedes-Benz Smart hardtops were sold out. Mercedes-Benz Smart has sold more than 500 vehicles a year since it was listed in China last year, and the amount of online purchases has accounted for nearly half of them.

“Sold 200 cars in three and a half hours”, this sales speed and sales frequency can be described as “unprecedented” in the Chinese auto market. As a new kind of thing, the "automotive network sales model" is of great vitality. Since the beginning of this year, a number of car companies have begun to extend the car sales network to the Internet. “Buying and selling cars” does not seem to be the “exclusive privilege” of 4S stores.

It is understood that the initial investment cost of a general automobile 4S shop is about 1000-3000 million, and high-end models can even be more than 50 million yuan. A small-scale 4S shop has a one-year operating cost of about 10 million yuan. Although e-commerce is still far from mature in China, the cost of an e-commerce sales platform is significantly lower than that of offline stores all over the country.

In addition, the establishment of a 4S shop for automobiles requires a large amount of land space. Finding land, building houses, and decoration often take months or even years, resulting in capital costs, time costs, labor costs, and logistics costs after opening. "Wool is on the sheep," and all these expenses will ultimately be borne by the consumer.

Internet sales can basically eliminate these costs. If half of the costs are shared with consumers, the car prices will naturally be much cheaper. Obviously, the cost of car network sales has an irreplaceable advantage.

Sensitive car dealers have “sniffed” potential business opportunities for car network sales. Recently, Liu Jinliang, vice president of the Geely Group and general manager of the sales company, once said that the company is negotiating with Alibaba Group, an e-commerce company, and plans to start selling Geely automotive products on Alibaba’s shopping site Taobao. At the same time, Dongfeng Nissan also launched the “Online Auto” service, and the new generation of MARCH Machi will start accepting online bookings. Geely Automobile cooperated with Alibaba and launched a special Panda version of the Internet. It was officially launched in 2011. The first batch of two models tested were A00-class pandas with prices ranging from 40,000 yuan to 60,000 yuan and the price was Between 75,000 yuan and 110,000 yuan.

However, from a different point of view, the physical selection of 4S stores will be more intuitive and reliable than the Internet. In addition, the so-called 4S stores, in addition to vehicle sales, also have three service functions: spare parts placement, after-sales service, and information feedback. It is these features that attract consumers and enable them to fully enjoy the convenience and comfort of the car after they have bought a car. This is exactly the current network sales can not be done, unless for the network sales to build a dedicated service platform.

What is even more important is that on the developed Internet today, online shopping scams have repeatedly occurred. Will online car purchases be falsified? How to protect consumer interests is a problem that needs to be solved in the "automotive network marketing model."