"Source of this article: China Consumer Daily"
"Changan's new Yidong PLUS 21-day pre-sale sales exceeded 10,000 vehicles." "Skyline ME5 pre-sale sales exceeded 5,000 units." "Geely ICON has exceeded 30,000 units in the pre-sale stage." "Tank 300 pre-sale 20 days new car orders exceeded the 10,000 mark." "Geely Xingyue L pre-sale 48-hour orders have exceeded 10,000 vehicles." ......
Car companies announced the results of new car pre-sales
Gradually become a new type of marketing method
It satisfies the appetite of consumers
But is the reality really so hot
Reporter of China Consumer Daily
An investigation has recently been launched
1
Pre-sale results with a halo
Li Wanli, a member of the China Automotive Industry Advisory Committee, told the China Consumer Daily reporter that in the context of the pressure on the overall automobile market, if a model can achieve hot sales at the pre-sale stage, laying a solid foundation for new cars, it is difficult not to attract the attention of consumers.
After careful combing by reporters, taking December 2021 as an example, in the time when it is not the peak season for new cars to be listed, there are as many as 63 new cars listed in the month, and an average of two new cars enter the auto market every day, so the frequency of new car listing can be described as very intensive.
Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the National Passenger Car Market Joint Association, said in an interview with the China Consumer Daily reporter that the release of new cars by car companies will generally go through three stages: "first launch", "announcement of pre-price" and "official listing", and each additional link can bring more exposure to new cars.
He believes that in addition to showing the dynamic information of new cars to the outside world through new car pre-sale, it is more important to maintain the heat of new cars in market competition, which is the key to stable sales of a new car.
2
Market sales of "blank periods"
According to the law of new car launch on the market, the interval between the pre-sale price and the official listing of a new car is short. In the absence of official announcements on the price of the product, how many consumers will choose to buy in the "blank period" on the eve of the new car listing, and can't help but mark a big question mark.
This suspicion does not come out of thin air. Unlike the new car listing, car companies will only announce the pre-sale price of the vehicle during the pre-sale stage of the new car. The pre-sale price is not the final selling price, which means that the pre-sale price still has room to float, and it is not excluded that the actual sales price is higher than the pre-sale price.
Even if the price of the new car is lower than the pre-sale price, there is a lot of uncertainty about the reduction. For example, whether the price of the new car will be adjusted, what kind of adjustment will change, etc., the above information cannot be known in the pre-sale process. To be sure, the difference between the actual sales price of a new car and the pre-sale price will lead to a change in consumer purchases.
For consumers, vehicle price is a particularly critical factor in the car purchase process, which greatly affects consumers' final purchase decisions.
And it is precisely when this key information is blank that a new car often claims to have achieved sales of thousands or even tens of thousands of units, which makes people have to question it. In other words, the new car is "naked" without a price and gets a good market response, which is somewhat counterintuitive.
Compared with the real sales data after the listing of new cars, the uncertain pre-sale results of new cars provide operating space for automobile companies to "brush orders".
Previously, the reporter found in the field investigation that the tank 300 model, which has been on the market for more than a year, still has the situation of transferring new car orders. It is understood that as long as the consumer submits a new car order according to the process and pays a fee of 3,000 yuan, he can get a tank 300 order. In a sense, 3,000 yuan can contribute a new car order to the tank 300.
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The reporter's investigation learned that within a period of several months from the time the manufacturer receives the consumer's new car order to the final delivery of the new car, the person who submits the new car has the right to change the owner once. There is still room for change in new car orders, not to mention the pre-sale period for new cars whose prices are not announced.
3
There is no guarantee from the manufacturer
How many of the pre-sale sales of new cars claimed by automobile companies have been successfully converted into actual sales orders? The answer to this question not only affects the brand image of car companies, but also relates to whether there is suspected false publicity in advertising.
In fact, it is not difficult to answer the confusion in the minds of consumers. For automobile companies, as long as the actual conversion rate of pre-sales is announced after the official listing of new cars, people's concerns can be dispelled. Unfortunately, as of now, few car companies have released this key data.
In this way, it is difficult to have an exact answer to the authenticity of the pre-sale results claimed by car companies.
In response to the use of new car pre-sale results as the focus of publicity when automobile companies publicize, Liu Xin, a lawyer at Beijing Yinghe Law Firm, said in an interview with reporters:
Pre-sale is a marketing model that is widely welcomed by many industries at present, and car companies want to create momentum for new cars through the pre-sale mechanism to stimulate consumers' impulsive consumption, and the "sales" in pre-sale actually play a disguised role in advertising for new cars. However, the behavior of car companies and dealers to brush sales for new cars through the transfer of order information may involve false publicity, luring consumers to impulsive consumption, and affecting the realization of consumers' right to choose independently.
In February 2020, Geely ICON, which was taking great efforts to build the exterior and interior, announced that "the pre-sale of 15-minute orders for 2020 vehicles" and "the cumulative number of pre-sale units exceeded 30,000 vehicles". However, according to the statistics of the National Association of Passenger Vehicles, the market performance of this new car that is hot in the pre-sale stage has been flat since its listing, and from March to May 2020, ICON sales were 2036, 2565 and 3360 respectively, which was in stark contrast to the market performance in the pre-sale stage.
It is not difficult to see that compared with the publicity of more than 30,000 vehicles in the pre-sale stage, the pre-sale conversion rate of Geely ICON in the 3 months of listing is only about 40%.
Article 8 of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law stipulates that business operators shall not make false or misleading commercial publicity about the performance, function, quality, sales status, user evaluation, and honors they have won on their goods, so as to deceive or mislead consumers. Business operators must not help other business operators conduct false or misleading commercial publicity through methods such as organizing false transactions.
Liu Xin said that the act of brushing pre-sale sales clearly violated the above regulations. Enterprises should follow the principles of voluntariness, equality, fairness and good faith in their production and business activities, and cannot disrupt market order and harm the legitimate rights and interests of other business operators and consumers through the model of sales fraud.
Liu Xin believes that the act of brushing pre-sale sales is not only easy to trigger impulsive consumption and irrational consumption, but also infringes on consumers' right to know and their right to make independent choices.
If this pre-sale fraud mechanism becomes the norm in the industry, it will not only infringe on the rights and interests of individual consumers, but also make consumers distrust the publicity become the norm, and "sales" will become an indicator that consumers are unwilling to refer to when consuming.
Enterprise integrity management is the long-term way, but also in order to create a good business environment should abide by the obligation.
Produced by the Editorial Department of China Consumer Daily New Media
Source/ China Consumer Daily, China Consumer Network
Reporter/Wu Bofeng
Editor/Ying Pei
Producer/He Yongpeng Ren Zhenyu