Recently, Volkswagen announced its sales results for 2021. In 2021, Volkswagen China delivered 3.3 million vehicles in China, down 14% year-on-year. Among them, SAIC Volkswagen's cumulative sales for the whole year were 1.242 million units, down 17.50% year-on-year. Three years of decline. FAW-Volkswagen's cumulative sales volume in 2021 was 1.85 million units, which also declined to a certain extent. Volkswagen was once an uncompromising automaker. It has introduced one model and one popular model. Why doesn't it work now? Next, we will talk about the public's public relations publicity and the reasons for the decline in word of mouth.
German cars are preconceived
In 1984, Volkswagen and SAIC Motor Group cooperated to establish Shanghai Volkswagen Co., Ltd., followed by santana. Later, Volkswagen cooperated with FAW to establish FAW Audi, and officially rolled off the production line of the Audi 200 V6 model in 1996. Volkswagen is the earliest foreign car brand to enter China, entering the decade as early as possible, so that Volkswagen has won the opportunity, let Volkswagen have a preconceived notion, and set a benchmark in the minds of the Chinese people.
In that decade, German cars could be described as a spring breeze, when the German company gave a suggestion that Santana was sold for 80,000 yuan in China, but it was sold for 150,000 yuan. In the 1990s, Santana sold nearly 200,000 in 2000, golf 180,000, Jetta 150,000, Volkswagen made a lot of money, and attracted a wave of loyal spiritual shareholders.
1、ESP
The first breakthrough Volkswagen found was called ESP, and at that time, the Chinese people did not even know what ESP was, but they set off a wave of resistance on the Internet because some Japanese cars did not have ESP as standard. Looking back now, does ESP matter? Important, but is it as important as some of the media advertise? Obviously, there are no, but more of the requirements of the regulations and the means of public opinion propaganda.
Almost all Japanese cars today come standard with ESP, but the impression that Japanese cars are unsafe is deeply rooted in the hearts of the older generation.
2. Anti-collision beam
Once upon a time, the anti-collision beam was also one of the means by which the Volkswagen water army attacked Japanese cars. And the collision beam and vehicle safety are directly linked, but people who know a little bit about the car know that the collision beam affects the low-speed collision damage of the vehicle, which has little impact on the safety of the passengers in the car, and the impact on the safety of the occupants is the body frame and energy absorption design.
Ironically, the Santana, the originator of Volkswagen's domestic models, is one of the few models with reduced rear impact beams, and the number of roof stiffeners is also the smallest in its class. How ironic is it that Toyota Vios and Honda Fit, the most entry-level models in Japan, are models with standard anti-collision beams?
3, the door station people + energy absorption useless theory
In those years, many Volkswagen 4S stores demonstrated juggling performances such as door standing people and knocking on steel plates for consumers, as if this would prove the safety of the car. At the same time, there have been a large number of posts on the Internet attacking the energy absorption of Japanese cars, there is no lack of "energy absorption to suck people out", but there is no doubt that such public relations is effective, many consumers began to use the knocking on steel plates, listening to the sound of closing the door to judge the safety of the vehicle, if the vehicle safety engineer knows, may be angry and vomit blood. At the same time, Volkswagen has done a good job of the economy of low-speed collisions, as if every small collision is dominated by Volkswagen, which naturally creates the impression that Volkswagen is safe.
1, burning oil problem
Before the emergence of Volkswagen's TSI+ DSG power combination, German cars had no advantage over Japanese cars in terms of power, neither fuel-efficient nor strong. As a result, this set of power systems called the golden power combination by volkswagen came out, and Volkswagen accepted this power combination through the publicity of DSG more advanced, turbocharged and more fuel-efficient power. But at the same time, this system was extremely immature when it first came out, seriously burning oil, gearbox death flashing, problems are not terrible, every car company will have quality problems, but how does Volkswagen do it? Relying on the trust of domestic consumers in the public, it has been delayed again and again, and no fundamental solution has been given. Volkswagen has not taken any recall measures since the problem of burning oil.
2. The transmission dies and flashes
Many spiritual shareholders comfort themselves that burning oil is to prepare a few more bottles of oil, a small problem. But what about dual-clutch death flicker? This should seriously affect safe driving.
As early as 2009, Volkswagen recalled a total of 13,500 models with DSG dual-clutch transmissions produced between September 2008 and August 2009 in North America. However, it was not recalled until 2013 in China. In 2019, Volkswagen recalled a number of dual-clutch models, and in the United States, Volkswagen has long been based on natural aspirated and AT gearboxes, it seems that Volkswagen really values the domestic consumer market and gives the latest technology to the Chinese people.
3. Shaft breakage incident
In 2014, the Sagitar broken shaft incident was exposed, which caused an uproar for a time, and it is reasonable to say that the broken shaft should be regarded as a serious quality problem, but the method adopted by volkswagen is still able to drag it out, recalling 563605 Sagittarius, but only patching, installing a metal liner for the vehicle, and did not fundamentally solve the problem of broken shaft, after adding a metal liner Sagittarius, there was a broken shaft incident, but it was suppressed under the strong public relations publicity of the public, and the matter was not resolved.
4. The Passat incident
The Passat incident is actually just a fuse, in fact, all of Volkswagen's models, in the crash test of the Zhongbao Research Institute are not performing well, but because of the fixed cognition of the high safety of the Volkswagen brand, coupled with the limited influence of the Zhongbao Research Institute, it has not attracted too much attention from consumers, but the Passat suddenly stabbed Lou Zi, 200,000 joint venture intermediate cars, the positive 25% bias collision score ranked first from the bottom, less than tens of thousands of domestic cars, all of a sudden the Volkswagen painstakingly operated safety lies punctured, As a result, the public reputation has fallen sharply, in the words of 38, it is deserved.
It is now 2022, 38 years after Volkswagen officially entered the Chinese market. The original psychological brainwashing method of marketing has not worked. How to distinguish between good and bad, the public's current market position in China, is inseparable from the trust of Chinese, but if the public continues to consume, trample on the trust of Chinese, it will eventually swallow the bitter fruit.