With the wave of electrification in the automotive industry, the once dominant position of the internal combustion engine has been impacted.
If product change is an inevitable trend of electrification, then looking back, the new power players have found another gem under the outlet, that is, the female user market that traditional car companies did not care at all. In the new energy market, the demand for women's cars is challenging the male drivers who have dominated the century.
Aurora's "2020 Automotive Information Industry Insights" also confirms such a fact with data. In 2020, 67.6% of drivers and 32.4% of women were drivers. However, the gender ratio of App users of Tesla and Weilai, the two head electric vehicle companies, is as high as 46.0% and 41.6% female, respectively.
As today's society is moving towards a better form of equal rights, and women's purchasing power and status continue to rise, we can find that more and more car companies are eyeing the "female drivers" who are more or less pejorative in the patriarchal society.
Can this "female driver" battle for car companies derived from electrification to a certain extent be launched? What elements will the future of cars need to be in order to be favored by women? We may be able to glimpse some clues from the changes in the female car user market over the years, as well as the market and product logic behind the changes.
A MINI, a precedent
When it comes to women's cars, to this day, many people will first think of Volkswagen's Beetle, Polo, or MINI such a striking or compact model.
If you want to understand the female car user market, we may wish to trace the origins from MINI, which is known as the originator of the "housewife car".
In fact, MINI is favored by women, which is a rather oolong story. The Outbreak of the Second Middle East War in 1956 strained gasoline supplies in Britain, and BMC decided to produce a small car that was more economical and fuel-efficient.
In 1957, BMC designer Alec Izgoni took on the role of a very clear starting point: the smallest car could easily carry 4 adults and some luggage items, thus achieving an optimal balance between fuel consumption and practicality.
With that goal in place, two years later, the world's first MINI drove off the BMC production line. The core competitiveness of economical economy and ability to meet the basic daily transportation needs has attracted many housewives with higher transportation needs by mistake, and mini has become the preferred car for European housewives for a long time.
It is not difficult to find that MINI's first entry into the huge female user group of housewives is not out of appearance, performance and other aspects to capture the hearts of female users, but because it is an excellent match with the special era of housewives who need to be more needed.
In the next fifty or sixty years, with the rapid development of the automobile industry, from the performance-oriented sports car, to the status symbol rolls-Royce, Bentley and other luxury cars, to the applicability of the full pickup truck, SUV, the men's car market has been more and more diversified iteration.
Compared with the increasingly diverse choices of men's cars, the women's car market is still gradually developing into a deep-rooted level in the stereotype of "more advantageous commuting".
In 2012, Forbes counted one of the top ten most popular male and female car products, and the list of men ranged from sports cars to luxury cars to pickup trucks. When it comes to the women's list, there are all small SUVs and cars.
Forbes analysts believe that car companies tend to iterate products to male buyers because they buy cars more often, and from the list, they tend to have more money to buy cars at higher prices.
In fact, the difference in user demand in the fuel vehicle market is intuitively reflected in the sharpening effect, that is, people's existing values often have a role in promoting their perception.
Specifically, MINI spread the first impression of female user demand orientation in the commuting to the industry in the early days, and the industry has since launched many similar models, and the market passively chooses to help car companies prove the correctness of this impression again, which will form a stereotypical cycle.
So why don't women's cars diversify and iterate?
Tan Qing said that AI believes that this is mainly because in the society where male power is more dominant, there are certain differences in the life paths of men and women, and in terms of diversification ability, male car scenes are largely superior to women. For example, men's social value from the top circle to the instinctive pursuit of speed has created a number of diversified categories such as luxury cars and sports cars, while women's demand scenes are relatively scarce.
Therefore, in the era of fuel vehicles dominated by men, there is a certain inevitability for car companies to innovate and reform around male product replacement and category diversification.
Women's marketing has to "shake a shot"
In the discussion of the changes in the female car market in the office, one of my colleagues, Tracy, said that there are countless cases of women actively choosing vehicles in film and television works, not only the hardcore girls who drive American muscle cars in Quentin's movie "King Kong is not bad", but also the hardcore girls who drive ford's classic sports car Thunderbird in "The End of the Road".
Or the Porsche 911 on the Little Red Book, or even the so-called "macho cars" such as Land Rover and Big G, which are also the first choice of many "fairies" now, luxury and performance are by no means exclusive to men.
Tracy's point of view is undoubtedly factually correct, but from the perspective of automobile marketing, female endorsement is actually a promoter of product connotation under the uneven development of the market group in the fuel vehicle industry.
Let's first look at it from the perspective of film and television marketing, compared with the classic cross-border marketing of brands such as Aston Martin and Chevrolet in "007" or "Transformers" in "masculine" movies, "King Kong is not bad" or "The End of the Road" These female-themed movies use classic models that are completely inconsistent with the actual screening time, so the marketing suspicion is very small.
From the perspective of film creation, this is actually mainly to use the brand and product connotation after a large number of market education in the classic performance car of the times to assist in the shaping of hardcore female characters in the movie, which is more like a creative opportunity rather than a marketing opportunity.
In fact, from the traditional car company marketing, it is not difficult for us to find that the phenomenon of relying on "objectifying women" in the automobile market to please the male market exists.
From the classic various auto shows "beauty with incense cars" to Audi and BMW have been reported by netizens through advertising to objectify women, it is not difficult to find that for a long time, car companies have preferred to risk being besieged by female users to please male consumers.
(BMW used car commercial: you know you're not the first)
It is not difficult to find that in the marketing activities of car companies, even if they contain a specific element of women, they often do not cut women as consumers, just like the more expensive cars standing next to the more beautiful female models at the auto show, the advertisements implicitly compare the relationship between men and women to the relationship between men and cars.
The appearance of women in the marketing of fuel vehicles seems to be more of a pusher in the direction of male social value and subjective resonance, through the use of women to spread brands and products for male consumers.
In fact, this is not only a unique phenomenon in the automotive industry, for example, cosmetics will use male marketing, but will not make decisions as consumers, macro pan-industry product development and marketing, is destined not to be subordinate to small and beautiful.
Therefore, from the female marketing advertisement of the "false shot" of fuel vehicles to the list of men and women of Forbes's 12 years of automotive products, it is undeniable that the women's market has been frozen in the simple demand of paper since MINI for a long time.
The demand portrait of the women's market changes
With the expansion of the proportion of female car owners in recent years, the market as a vane for the development of the industry, the passive choice of the female market in the era of fuel vehicles, is now quietly changing with the wave of electrification.
Then car companies want to seize a new wave of female user dividends, no doubt need to start from the single demand for transportation in the female market for 60 years, so as to develop towards the trend of diversification. At present, the first shot of this diversified war, many car companies have tacitly chosen to start from the appearance.
As for how to take this first shot out of the level, play style? The answers given by car companies seem to be very similar, summarized in three words, nothing more than small, beautiful and tender.
From Wuling's Hongguang MINIEV to Baojun KIWIEV, and then to the Great Wall Euler's cat series, although many netizens complain that the current female cars on the market are too the appearance, it is a battery car with a shell, but in the face of beautiful appearance and more beautiful prices, only the hand that pulls out the wallet is the most honest.
Tianyancha information shows that the media impression correlation between Xinbaojun KIWIEV and parent company SAIC-GM-Wuling is highly bound, and the recent heat is high. Hongguang MINIEV sales frequently dominate the major lists, and female car owners account for nearly 70%. From January to August this year, Euler sold 71,900 vehicles, an increase of 316.1% year-on-year.
Tan Qing said that AI believes that many car companies have begun to exert efforts to the female market and have achieved certain results, but the negative news from time to time in the industry is also objective, and if you want to continue the results, the current main problems are concentrated in marketing and products.
Specifically, compared with fuel vehicles for male users, more focus on hard power such as configuration parameters, in the current market of female car users, many players have chosen to start from soft power, which seems to have a more advantageous way of playing in the short term.
But whether it is hard power products or soft power marketing, for many industries, if you want to mature, you often need to make a balance between the two.
For the layout of the female market, what is the experience of the current car companies in marketing and products, we consulted Wang Li (pseudonym), the marketing director of a traditional car company.
"The only experience is probably to cross the river with Euler." Wang Li said, "In fact, everyone has not paid too much attention to this (women's) market, or linear extension of the old thinking." I personally believe that the new brand is now mainly to tap the incremental market of female users and establish a moat, while the old brand should find a balance between the new market and the brand connotation on this basis. ”
As he said, in fact, the current new brand and the old brand have two different high-quality chips under the Boston matrix, that is, in the macro industry, the new brand has a problem product with high growth rate and low market share, which is expected to become a star product; the old brand has a low growth rate and high market share of cash cow products, which can support the new brand building.
Despite the favorable timing and location, people and this step are currently encounterable and unattainable by car companies. Today's Mercedes-Benz and Euler, one old and one new, have successively turned over in the open market.
The first is the Mercedes-Benz invitation to Yang Kasa to endorse the incident, which is undoubtedly a classic example of the marketing level of the female user battle, and also lets us see the brand connotation that it was once proud of, but it has become the biggest drag oil bottle in the new opportunity.
Mercedes-Benz let the public enemy of "Puxin Man" Yang Kasa endorse, rubbing the hot spot of male and female car owners to brush a wave of good feelings, but it seems to have forgotten the basic disk of male users accumulated in brand positioning and connotation over the past hundred years.
With the uncontrollable fermentation of public opinion, the lifeblood of hurting the "male elite class" can be said to be a warning to Mercedes-Benz to taste the "forbidden fruit" for the first time. For old brands, the biggest difficulty in opening up new markets is undoubtedly the need to find an optimal balance between new markets and old connotations.
Regarding the new brand of Euler Good Cat, it is an example of the product level in the female user battle. Compared to Mercedes-Benz's marketing rollover, products like Euler tend to cause greater damage to the brand.
Recently, there have been a large number of Euler good cat users on the Internet for the car's "chip reduction" problem, Euler good cat claims to be equipped with Qualcomm 8-core professional car specification chip to these owners of the car, but became the old Intel 4-core A3940 chip released in 2016, resulting in slow response speed, running stutter, incompatible with many mainstream applications and other issues.
On December 9, Euler Automobile issued the latest statement, saying that the owners of the cars before the release date of the statement and the designated Euler good cat owners, in addition to enjoying the rights and interests package worth 7200 yuan, also enjoy the lifetime warranty of the whole vehicle and the charging rights of the first owner of 10,000 yuan. Although corresponding compensation has been made, the damage caused to the brand by this incident is undoubtedly difficult to collect.
For new brands, avoiding the product strength of old brands, it is natural to start from soft power in the short term to renew the basic disk of their own audience, but marketing soft power is like a flower above the soil, and without the nutrient protection of hard power, it is obviously not feasible. Therefore, new brands need to achieve a more stable balance between product and marketing in a subtle way.
In general, ONCE MINI for the first time in the level of transportation demand to open up a female car, but just like around the male sports car, luxury car, pickup truck and many other categories appeared, in the future in the female user market, if the product stops at the appearance of this element of crazy inner volume, it is undoubtedly boring.
A more diversified demand orientation is expected to lead to more new products around women, which is still a blue ocean that has yet to be developed.
Ps: Tan Qing said AI, turn left new energy vehicles, turn right smart driving, there is depth, there is temperature, the author Zheng driving, reprint please retain copyright information.
Some references:
https://baike.baidu.com/item/mini/19426?fr=aladdin
The Top 10 Most Popular Car Brands With Men and Women——Micheline Maynard