"No investigation, no voice."
Seemingly to reflect the crimson color specially painted on the streets and alleys because of the approaching of the New Year, after the cold, a hazy snow mist quietly falling in Beijing pushed the joyful atmosphere of every household to a climax.
Fengke Wanda Plaza, located in Beijing's Fengtai District, did not abandon its position under the attack of another round of the new crown epidemic, but made the annual Wanda New Year Goods Festival more prosperous than in previous years in the face of the people's high desire to consume.
However, in the golden location on the first floor of Wanda Plaza, the first Wanda Red Flag Experience Center, which has just opened, does not seem to feel the lively atmosphere of the New Year, and the customers in pairs of threes and threes look particularly dazzling in front of the crowded jewelry stores around them.
Unlike the Chaoyang District Hopson Hui Shopping Center, which has opened up an entire floor to accommodate the new forces experience store, the one-story layout of Fengke Wanda Plaza is no different from that of traditional shopping malls.
In addition to the jewelry stores of major brands, there is also a Hendry watch shop, a Pizza Hut, and stores such as ZARA and UNIQLO that mainly use clothing accessories as the main products.
At the same time, it is not difficult to find that Wanda Plaza has poured almost all the advertising resources of the advantageous locations to this red flag experience store.
Including the huge LED screen at the main entrance of Wanda, the street lamp billboard that surrounds the entire square, and even the entrance to the straight ladder on the first floor and the corner of the escalator leading to the underground parking lot, are all filled with a strong advertising smell.
Relying on wanda plaza's abundant customer resources to achieve diversion, Wanda Hongqi experience store may be miscalculating.
From the mouth of the in-store sales, it is known that the staff of the Current Wanda Hongqi Experience Store are from traditional distribution channels, and in his opinion, this is not much different from the Hongqi 4S store where he was before.
"It's equivalent to moving the Hongqi 4S store directly into the mall."
The same sense of variance comes from the innovative technology facilities in the store.
In previous related reports, there is a virtual digital human technology for shopping guide use, in fact, there is no staff to take the initiative to guide consumers to experience; the BOE picture screen and the versatile multi-faceted screen located on the back wall of the experience store, in addition to changing some works of art and advertising films of Hongqi models from time to time, have not been able to help consumers understand the cultural heritage of Hongqi's history as advertised...
Even the somatosensory interactive screen that the author previously thought was the most impressive, claiming to be "DIY decoration of the vehicle's appearance and interior through specific somatosensory gesture recognition, and can provide 720-degree car viewing and interactive car selection", but for some reason it has not been able to see the physical object in the store.
It is worth noting that the service work area located on the second basement floor of Wanda Plaza in the previous publicity is indeed true, including a small model exhibition area, a smart shared car wash space extending forward, and a small beauty decoration shop.
But the problem is that the original plan of the second basement floor of Wanda Plaza is a parking lot, so the service work area can be seen as an area forcibly opened up on the parking space, and the relatively small area and the continuous shuttle of social vehicles make the ideal service work area that can assume multiple functions more than enough and insufficient.
"Investigation is like 'october pregnancy', solving problems is like 'giving birth', investigation is solving problems."
How did Wanda marry Hongqi Automobile?
The speed of Wanda's marriage with Hongqi, which met and knew each other, is truly amazing.
In August last year, Wanda Group Chairman Wang Jianlin visited CHINA FAW, and then the two sides signed a strategic agreement to expand FAW Hongqi's sales channels by relying on Wanda's cultural and tourism resources and Wanda Plaza as a traffic entrance.
Just two months later, China FAW and Wanda Group announced that the strategic cooperation would be officially launched, and Wang Jianlin even announced that he would personally take the lead, and all senior executives above the vice president of Wanda would be replaced by Hongqi cars.
What makes people remember is that at that time, there was also a fierce discussion on Weibo that "Wang Sicong, as a director of Wanda, will also replace the red flag car with his father", which became one of the hot stems of the double harvest of traffic for a time.
In November, Wanda Automotive Technology Service Co., Ltd. was officially established, and its investors are not only from Wanda Group, but also a company called Taiqing Technology.
In fact, the major shareholder behind Taiqing Technology is Yue Ri'an, chairman of Shandong Taiyue Group, and Taiyue Group is also the most important partner of FAW Hongqi in traditional sales channels, and is a dealer group with four brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Ford, Beijing Hyundai, and Hongqi, and more than 30 stores.
Therefore, rather than saying that the cooperation agreement between Wanda and Hongqi on the new sales channel is a resource replacement that relies on the advantages of each industry, it is a tripartite agreement that truly injects the operational thinking of traditional dealer groups.
At the same time, when talking about the role of promoters in this tripartite agreement, it seems that it is impossible not to mention Li Hongpeng, the general manager of Wanda Automobile, who has served in Mercedes-Benz, Ford, Hyundai, and just took office a few days ago.
Turning over Li Hongpeng's career history, it is not difficult to find that he has sufficient practical experience in the market sales sector of car companies, and the deeds that really made Li Hongpeng famous in the industry were solved by hand about ten years ago to solve the chaotic problem of Mercedes-Benz's sales channels in China.
At that time, Li Hongpeng had just become the executive vice president of sales and marketing of Beijing Benz Automobile Co., Ltd., and Mercedes-Benz was also facing many problems such as the decline of brand influence and stagnant sales, and the most headache was the chaotic sales channels.
For a long time, Mercedes-Benz has maintained two sales channels of domestic production and import in the Chinese market. However, the overly decentralized sales model not only failed to make Mercedes-Benz break out of the broader world, but on the contrary, there was frequent competition with the same door, and then it continued to squeeze and deteriorate to form internal friction.
"If you want to do a good job, you must first use it", Li Hongpeng clearly realized that if Mercedes-Benz wants to revitalize the brand and promote sales, it must make sufficient efforts at the source of sales.
Therefore, under the leadership of Li Hongpeng, China and Germany established an "operation and management committee", and the "business improvement plan" proposed by them also received unprecedented attention and was listed as the number one project inside Mercedes-Benz at that time.
As expected, the results of these two initiatives were immediate. Mercedes-Benz quickly eliminated the internal friction between the two channels, single-handedly established a distribution network throughout the country, and the annual sales of 600,000 vehicles finally fulfilled Mercedes-Benz's dream of standing at the top of the luxury "food chain".
At the same time, it is also benefiting from the accumulation of experience at this stage that Li Hongpeng put forward his unique secret to the future sword and lake - the "water maintenance" theory, and how to deal with the relationship between car companies and dealers in sales channels.
"Like fish farming, if you want to raise fish well, you must first raise water to ensure the profitability of dealer investors and improve the sales efficiency of dealers."
"It is necessary to create a good business environment for dealers through a solid management system, operation system and staff training, thereby fundamentally promoting the improvement of sales performance."
Li Hongpeng believes that investing in dealers is the top priority to ensure terminal sales, and this measure should be directly reflected in the service experience of consumers when using the car in the actual application at this stage.
"The future dealer network is not only a retail terminal that provides car service, but also a frontier for providing customer experience; through continuous optimization of the service experience, the dealership will be transformed into a quality life experience place frequently visited by users, creating a 'new retail' model for the automotive industry."
If The operational thinking of Taiyue Group in traditional sales channels has profoundly affected the cooperation model between Wanda and Hongqi, then Li Hongpeng is the one who has long fought with this set of thinking in different battlefields and tried to find a breakthrough.
Wanda Hongqi Experience Store is essentially a mutual achievement
Li Hongpeng took advantage of the opportunity to join Wanda Automobile last year, and revealed his true feelings in the circle of friends, revealing the bright prospects of his future career.
"In the next 10 years, the great changes in China's auto industry will occur in the field of circulation and consumption; the integration of tradition and innovation will surely give birth to a dynamic world's largest consumer market!"
On the basis of wanda and hongqi cooperation to integrate the superior resources of both sides, this set of "new retail" models built around Li Hongpeng's "water maintenance" theory and user experience-centered are indeed much smarter than the offline sales channels of the new car-making forces.
At present, in order to build a brand image and attract more user traffic, most of the new car-making forces choose to build brand experience stores located in the core area of the city, such as Weilai's Weilai Center on East Chang'an Avenue and Xiaopeng's flagship experience center in Sanlitun...
However, the first thing in front of the new forces is the high rent problem, Xiaopeng Automobile Chairman He Xiaopeng revealed in an interview that the Xiaopeng Automobile flagship experience center located in Sanlitun will cost more than 10 million yuan a year in rent alone, and this high expenditure is undoubtedly too heavy a burden for the new forces that have not yet achieved profitability.
Therefore, due to financial pressure, the new forces can only place stores related to maintenance and maintenance that involve user services in remote locations where rents are relatively cheap, but this also indirectly cuts off the coherence of the user's service experience, and only when such services are needed will they deliberately patronize these remote stores.
However, relying on Wanda Plaza as the traffic entrance, the Wanda Hongqi Experience Store not only appropriates the user resources in the main core areas of the country, but also directly opens the service center that undertakes the maintenance task under the mall, greatly optimizing the service experience of new and old car owners in test drives and maintenance.
At the same time, in the context of the entire automotive industry, which is less and less emphasizing the value of hardware, the traditional car companies once sold hardware to obtain revenue at one time, and more and more enterprises tried to achieve profitability through software iteration and user services.
This ubiquitous back-end market for automobile consumption is gradually being lengthened, and the consumption scenario that relies on travel is also one of the new forces.
Hongqi Experience Store is backed by the abundant commercial resources of Wanda Plaza, which itself has given users a wider range of travel reasons in addition to enjoying services. Compared with the passive consumption deliberately created by some shopping malls using gimmicks such as free charging and free parking, the preferential policies given to users by Wanda Hongqi Experience Store are more reflected in active consumption scenarios such as movie watching, hotels, events and tourism.
From passive travel to active travel, and then from passive consumption to active consumption, it is not so much that the Hongqi Experience Store has enjoyed too many traffic dividends brought by Wanda Plaza, but rather that this is a new situation of mutual benefit and win-win cooperation and mutual achievements between the two sides.
Why does it have to be a red flag?
Behind Wanda and Hongqi holding hands, in addition to the inextricable ties between The Taiyue Group and Li Hongpeng, it seems to be mixed with some subjective emotional will.
In the hearts of the older generation, Hongqi is not a simple automobile brand, but also represents the automobile industry established in the early days of the Republic. The Hongqi on the inside is a "chief's car" for state leaders to ride, and outside is a "foreign affairs courtesy car" that supports the façade of the motherland.
Chairman Mao also visited FAW before the birth of the red flag, and was full of expectations for the infant Chinese automobile industry, "When will we be able to get on the car we built ourselves?" ”
Under the rendering of strong national pride, the significance of Hongqi to the Chinese people has long been beyond the car brand itself.
However, Hongqi carries too heavy a historical mission, the rapid development speed covers up the overall quality defects and flaws, transmission oil leakage, starter teething and other design problems abound, while opening and repairing has basically evolved into the use of Hongqi cars normal.
As a result, in the development process of the next 30 or 40 years, Hongqi has experienced a series of events from suspension of production to resumption of production, and the personnel turmoil of the management has also made the expectation of Hongqi on the right track gradually disappear.
It is worth noting that Hongqi is not without wanting to keep pace with the times through reform.
Time came to 1996, when the production has been discontinued for 15 years, Hongqi returned to the public vision with a new series of models, and models such as Mingshi, Century Star, and Hongqi Shengshi are the brand of the times after Hongqi resumed production.
Although the transformation of the thinking mode for the general public is irrefutable, Hongqi has not changed the inherent impression of "chief car" and "foreign affairs courtesy car" rooted in the people's minds in marketing, on the contrary, many ordinary people do not know that ordinary people can even buy hongqi cars.
The reforms that Hongqi launched since 1996 are clearly not enough, and the deteriorating sales performance is enough to explain everything.
Gradually entering the line of sight of young people in the new era is the new red flag brought by Xu Liuping after he became the chairman of FAW Group five years ago.
Xu Liuping believes that if you want to create the road to the rejuvenation of Hongqi in the hands of this generation, you must shed the historical shackles that have been imprisoned on Hongqi for a long time, and you must impress young consumers with new model series and marketing models.
Therefore, after the Hongqi L5 and Hongqi H7, Xu Liuping launched the Hongqi H5 aimed at the luxury market in the second year after taking office, and in the same year, the Hongqi HS7 was also officially landed at the Guangzhou Auto Show.
Since then, the speed of red flag innovation can be described as uncontrollable.
In 2019, Hongqi HS5, HS7 and E-HS3 were listed one after another, and hongqi S9 and E115 concept cars with supercars were also unveiled at the Frankfurt International Motor Show, gaining the first time since Hongqi was selected for the "World Automobile Mingjian" in the 1960s.
In addition to the painstaking efforts spent on the new model series, Hongqi has also laid down its image baggage for the first time, gradually transitioned from the traditional marketing model to the field loved by young people, and has cooperated with Li Ning and the Forbidden City in the national tide and cultural level, and even set its sights on e-sports, officially announcing that it has become the chief partner of the Asian E-sports Masters Cup.
The sales report card on the desk never lies. After undergoing a series of reforms, the sales volume of the new Hongqi reached 200,000 vehicles in 2020; last year, the sales volume of Hongqi reached another peak, exceeding 300,000 in one fell swoop.
Perhaps this figure will not be too dazzling in front of the year-end report cards of major car companies, but compared with Hongqi, which only sold 14,000 remaining Hongqi H7 in six years before this reform, it can really be described as "dare to call the sun and the moon for a new day".
As for the cooperation reached with Wanda's offline sales channels, it can also be seen as another new attempt by Hongqi on the road to rejuvenation.
However, it still needs to be noted that according to the actual survey results of Wanda Hongqi stores, the first experience store still adopts sales routines similar to traditional 4S stores, and innovative user experiences such as "virtual digital people" and "somatosensory interactive screens" are not in place.
As a key step for traditional car companies to move towards a new sales model, I really don't want to see Hongqi sigh because it has not injected enough interesting "soul" into such a beautiful "body" whether it is in the case of brand accumulation, sales concept or store resources have surpassed the new forces.
Of course, this is also the fundamental reason why after Li Hongpeng took office, there is an urgent need to implement the "water" theory and the "new retail" model around user experience layer by layer.
After all, history has long warned us that we must always remember to float on the surface.