The expectations of the Chinese market for the Lincoln brand are too high, and when the domestic Lincoln cannot meet this expectation, lincoln's crisis is also brewed.
In 2014, Lincoln returned to China after 7 years, and then began the domestic planning, but subject to various reasons, the domestic Lincoln was not officially launched until 2020, and Lincoln also took advantage of a wave of domestic boom, the cumulative sales of the year reached 62,000 vehicles, an increase of 32% year-on-year, setting a record for the highest annual sales since returning to China.
By 2021, with the joint efforts of SUV "three musketeers" adventurers, navigators and aviators, the cumulative sales of 11 months exceeded 82,800 vehicles, an increase of 54% year-on-year, and the cumulative sales of domestic models exceeded 74,600 vehicles, which can be said that Lincoln's voice reached the highest level in recent years.
The reason is that the precision marketing of Lincoln's Way and the domineering female president Mao Jingbo undoubtedly played a huge role. But just like the simple accumulation of numbers, how long Lincoln's growth power can last may be the undercurrent of thinking under the prosperity.
A crisis of trust, the product can not match the Lincoln Way
According to Lincoln's official statement, after returning to China, Lincoln began to develop and practice the customer service concept of Lincoln's Way in the Chinese market, with excellent customer experience as the essence, in order to build the industry's premier customer experience brand.
In fact, in the feedback of car owners in recent years, Lincoln has indeed given consumers a meticulous and tailor-made customer experience in car purchases, allowing them to feel the difference of the "Lincoln Way".
However, the consumer's travel life is not just a relatively short part of car purchase, but also includes all aspects of the car experience and after-sales service, which Lincoln obviously did not do.
It is understood that the current Lincoln products are controversial. With its fist model, the Lincoln Adventurer, for example, it is called "Shell Sharp Edge" by netizens, the new car and Ford Sharp Edge are also based on the Ford C2 platform, and are produced by Changan Ford Chongqing Factory, the two are inextricably linked.
The newly listed Lincoln Adventurer PHEV version uses a 1.5T three-cylinder engine, although equipped with front and rear dual-motor units, but the pure electric endurance is only 64 kilometers, and the three-cylinder engine is also difficult for domestic consumers to accept the existence.
On the car quality network, complaints about adventurers also began to appear. The complaint data shows that although the domestic Lincoln adventurer has not been on the market for a long time, there are already many faults such as navigation problems, audio-visual system failure, glass cracking, suspension failure, transmission failure, light on, and door leakage.
In addition, Lincoln also has some service complaints in terms of after-sales. According to a Chengdu car owner reflected on the forum, after the problem with the pilot he purchased, although the local 4S store verbally promised to deal with it, it did not get a substantive reply for a long time, and he laughed at himself, saying, "Sure enough, only when buying a car is God." ”
Arguably, product issues have made consumers deeply suspicious of the "Lincoln Way," which is obviously true.
This is clearly contrary to lincoln's original intention. According to the original Lincoln Way, "the 'Lincoln Way' is rooted in the lincoln brand's nearly 100-year history of personal service, an innovative move created for today's Chinese luxury car consumers, so that they can not only experience lincoln's best products, but also enjoy lincoln's best services."
In layman's terms, Lincoln must not only do a good job in the car, but also do a good job in service, do a good job in pre-sales and after-sales, give consumers high-end, distinctive consumption and service experience, let customers feel the exclusive ultimate service, so that consumers can obviously feel how Lincoln exercises the high-end way.
But now? Consumers did not enjoy Lincoln's best products, nor did they enjoy the best service, and the joy of buying a car has long been worn away.
Isn't that a problem with Lincoln China? It thinks that the exclusive service given to customers in the car purchase process will allow them to get the experience of luxury brands, is this "lazy" or "arrogant"? Perhaps the most vocal is the consumer himself.
In this sense, Lincoln's current strategy in China only grasps the service surface of Lincoln's Way, and does not grasp the tight link between Lincoln's products and services. It is not that the service is not important, in the context of China's consumption upgrade, service will definitely occupy a very important position in the competition of luxury brands, but if it is only a one-sided understanding of service, then Lincoln is doomed to lose consumers' brand trust.
Although he had looked up at the starry sky, Mao Jingbo had not been able to keep his feet on the ground
It has to be said that Lincoln has achieved rapid development in the Chinese market, and Mao Jingbo, president of Lincoln China, is indispensable, but honor and disgrace are shared, and since they want to wear a crown, they must bear its weight. Today's Lincoln brand undercurrent crisis, Mao Jingbo is also difficult to blame.
Mao Jingbo once said: "When we look up at the stars and imagine the future, we have never forgotten the down-to-earth cultivation. Every step of Lincoln's growth has benefited from our insistence on doing the right thing. ”
How to understand? In fact, it is necessary to do products and brands in a down-to-earth manner, and also to seriously explore consumer demand. As for how far to do it? Anyway, Mao Jingbo enjoys the sense of accomplishment brought about by the current sales growth of Lincoln.
Needless to say, the dividend of the domestic SUV Three Musketeers has gradually disappeared, and it is not known how the Lincoln Z based on young Chinese consumers has performed. But against the disclosed design and intelligent technology, it seems that it is not very optimistic, after all, the so-called "smartest fuel vehicle" label can not impress young consumers at all.
Moreover, it is worth mentioning that Mao Jingbo once said of Lincoln's target car owners, "We are targeting young people around 36-38 years old, which is also the average age of luxury car brand owners."
That is to say, the young people in Mao Jingbo's mouth are the pre-85 group, these people are the most stressful family and career pressure, when Lincoln positioned them as Generation Z, it is difficult to understand that this is a result of "successfully understanding the needs of Chinese customers".
To say more, Mao Jingbo does have excellent results in Mercedes-Benz, but Mercedes-Benz has a thick brand foundation in China, and Unlike Lincoln, Lincoln needs to be re-recognized, if the brand reputation collapses at the beginning, it is difficult to remedy it.
Although Mao Jingbo has repeatedly emphasized that Lincoln's success in the past two years is due to the customer experience of adhering to lincoln's way, but the "lincoln way" is not a simple service concept, but a concept that products and services complement each other and complement each other, if Mao Jingbo and Lincoln cannot deeply expand the connotation of "Lincoln's way", then the so-called looking up at the stars can only be left to look up.
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