Written by | Huang Zhi and Liang Qiumeng
Produced | Automotive Sankei
In the past two days, Mr. Feng, who lives in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, is in a very happy mood.
The sales of GAC Toyota Syna called and told him that the store had suddenly put a quota for picking up cars in March/April, and asked him to pick up the car in advance.
When the order was placed in December last year, the plan provided to him by the sales was either a full payment plus a 50,000 yuan luxury service package, or a loan plus a maintenance package of 20,000 yuan, but the pick-up time was unified at the end of April. Mr. Feng chose the former. Picking up the car two months in advance is undoubtedly an unexpected surprise.
In fact, not only Mr. Feng, but also the owner group of the national race he is in, many people have recently received calls from salesmen.
"Mr. Rabbit" in Hefei, Anhui Province, said, "Book a car for a month, On February 17, I am ready to pick up the car at an affordable price, and the 4S store is now in a hurry to sell, and if you don't sell the manufacturer, you will recover the quota."
The "first brother" in Changsha, Hunan Province, said, "Two days earlier to return the cattle, said that it would take 7/8 months to get the car, today received several sales calls saying that in April can be affordable to pick up the car."
They call this the victory of the "party of waiting."
From years ago to now, Xena seems to have gone from a seller's market to a buyer's market in just over a month.
Some people call Xena's price increase a play of "self-directed and self-acting" by manufacturers and distributors, and it really can't go on and has to show its true face.
Some people also compared the wholesale volume of 2791 vehicles in December 2021 with the insurance volume of 935 vehicles to prove that There are a large number of commercial vehicles in the circulation channel of Sai Na, rather than delivering to users.
In most cases, it is normal for a new car to go through such a shopping process, but this is not the norm for GAC Toyota.
In January this year, the number of insurance vehicles on the Sai Na was 4370, while the wholesale volume was 5399 vehicles, which is still a big gap. In contrast, the ratio of the insurance volume to the wholesale volume of other hot-selling models of GAC Toyota is almost more than 90%, or even more than 100%.
What's more, the inventory coefficient of GAC Toyota dealers has always been lower than 1, almost in a state where a car is sold, and the sought-after race should not have too many cars in the circulation channel.
Behind the data, what is the internet celebrity Saina going through?
NO.1
[Unstoppable price]
The day before we were about to visit the store, several activists in the group of owners of Xena told us one thing: "Don't believe the first price that the sale says." ”
In fact, in a GAC Toyota 4S store in Beijing's Chaoyang District, a sales consultant admitted to us: "Everyone's quotations are definitely the same, many of them are for 'scare people', but the operation of each store is different, it must be able to talk, and the specific price can be discussed." ”
Therefore, the process of consumers looking at the car is to test, clash, and wrestle with dealers.
When visiting the first store, we pretended not to understand the market, so the sales consultant was tight about the specific markup amount and pick-up time, and was only willing to give a general range. In the next few stores, when we gave the quotation plan we got in other stores, the sales were obviously a lot more frank.
For example, the aforementioned Chaoyang 4S store directly gives two choices: adding a decoration package of 25,000 yuan can be deployed to the existing car, or delivering a full fixed car, which can guarantee the original price in June.
The sales of another store first informed us that the store rejected any orders due to excessive orders and lack of existing cars. However, a day later, he took the initiative to find it, saying that adding more than 20,000 to 30,000 yuan of decorative bags could pick up the car in March and April, and added that "the specific price can be discussed again."
After visiting a number of stores in Beijing, the summary is: the more you add, the earlier you pick up the car, but there is no problem without raising the price, you can basically pick up the car in a few months, as for more specific, you have to pay the non-refundable deposit before you can pay the bottom.
But in any case, compared with the 70,000 or 80,000 yuan increase before the Spring Festival, and even directly set the time of the parity car to the exaggerated degree next year, now the market of Sai Na has fallen back rapidly.
In other places, the supply and demand relationship of Xena is even more relaxed than that of Beijing, and the heat is far less than it was at the beginning.
At several secondary dealers we interviewed, the price of Sai Na in their hands has also dropped from tens of thousands of yuan in the previous price increase to about 10,000 yuan now.
In Shanghai, a dealer said that if the full payment is paid, the car can be picked up at a parity in May, "just earn an interest money".
A 4S store sales manager in Anhui described the situation in their store: they had predicted that the number of bookings in the last three months of 2021 would exceed 100 vehicles, so they confidently set up a 45,000 yuan booking bag. However, the actual situation is that the price of the additional package has to decrease every month, and the order volume has dropped from 8 and 11 vehicles in October and November to only 3 vehicles in December, and now it has resumed affordable car pick-up.
The sales manager of a 4S store in a fourth-tier city in Guangdong told Auto Industry and Economics: "The manufacturer has given us a quota of about 10 vehicles per month, and at present, it is just an average of 10 vehicles sold per month." But a few years ago, it was a 50,000 increase, and now it can only be increased by 10,000. "Of these 10 orders, half come from secondary channels.
The reason for the emergence of secondary channel resources, on the one hand, may be the "unspoken rules" between secondary dealers and 4S stores, from which the sales department can obtain greater profits, on the other hand, it may also be the regional imbalance of demand, through the secondary realization of "collusion" between different regions.
Although there are a large number of secondary transactions, some secondary car dealers said that the profit of Upside Down Sai Na is not high, "and it will earn 1,000 yuan in information fees."
In any case, it is clear that many cars are not delivered to the end user. This is why in the past two months, there has been a big difference between the number of wholesale sales of the federation and the amount of compulsory insurance.
The Sai Na waiting for delivery outside the dealer's store has fallen into dust
But even so, dealers are still looking forward to extracting more value from Xena. For example, more than one sales consultant confessed to us that the Sai was one of the few models outside the Highlander that could make 4S stores earn more; for example, when we asked why there were several racing cars in the parking lot that had fallen into a thick layer of dust, the sales replied: "Some are still negotiating the price."
From the beginning of the scramble to raise the price, and then to the mutual testing with consumers today, the price of Xena will soon be unstoppable.
NO.2
[Blowing and bursting of foam]
At the Chengdu Auto Show in August last year, GAC Toyota's domestically produced Sai na made its first public appearance, so hot that "I can't squeeze in if I want to see Sai Na".
At the same time, the Internet began to circulate a suspected price of 276,900 to 369,800 yuan. Although we have been unable to verify where this news without a source came from, at least from the various messages around Xena that netizens in social media at that time can see that the common price expectation of ordinary consumers is that the low allocation is within 300,000 yuan, and the high allocation is 400,000 yuan.
Also that summer, the parallel import of Senna in the Tianjin Port Free Trade Zone (Note: the common name of parallel import car dealers, different from the domestic Sai na) still did not solve the problem of National VI emissions, and could not be delivered. The 2020 inventory car that can be shipped (that is, the previous generation of 3.5L Senna) is even close to 800,000 yuan because of the strange goods, and the landing price of the top version in the market is even close to 800,000 yuan. Even in September 2021, after the Senna gradually solved the emission problem and began to ship one after another, its market price fluctuated between 500,000 and 700,000 yuan.
In the past, Senna's reputation, positioning and expectations in the market, as well as the sharply reduced price of the domestic version compared with parallel imports, have made consumers' expectations and heat for Xena continue to increase.
This expectation also gave GAC Toyota and its dealers a wrong judgment, resulting in a deviation in the formulation of price strategies, and a person close to the sales strategy department also confirmed this problem to us.
As a parallel import car operator said at that time: "What is open now and what is opened next year is completely two markets and two kinds of consumer groups." ”
Just like the 4S store sales described to us that the first users to take away the price increase, they were "driving alphas to pick up the car years ago." Similarly, these people will be willing to spend 700,000 yuan to buy a parallel import car.
It is undeniable that such a customer group really exists, they or the company buys a car, there is no strict budget limit; or like alpha users, they are not bad at buying a car, and the time to pick up the car is far more important than the tens of thousands of mark-ups.
But how big is this group?
We can refer to the number of elfa and Senna cars in the past two years to roughly judge the size of this market.
In 2020 and 2021, Alpha's annual insurance volume stabilized at about 23,000 vehicles, almost all of which were medium-sized models. The parallel import of Senna was unable to get out of the car for a long time last year due to emissions, and sales fluctuated, with the number of insured vehicles in 2019 and 2020 being about 10,000 and 6,000 vehicles respectively.
Such a market size may be able to support the price increase at the beginning of the domestic competition, but it is difficult to maintain it for a long time.
When many so-called middle-class two-child families began to look forward to driving Sai Na, and even parallel importers directly shouted that they could not understand the price of 700,000 at the same time, it was obvious that the market had diverged.
After the current batch of consumers who support the 80,000-dollar price increase of Xena are happy to pick up the car, there are no more potential customers who can support such a market.
So the bubble began to burst.
NO.3
[Is there really not enough capacity?] ]
An engineer from GAC Toyota told Autosemonic: "Highlander's production design at the time of the plan was 4,000 vehicles, and as a result, it was popular with the market after the listing, and soon increased the planning to 10,000 vehicles. ”
Increasing Xena's production at the production level is not a difficult task for GAC Toyota. The engineer gave an example of a planned production capacity of 100,000 vehicles, "You have to coordinate seven or eight thousand really casually, and there is no problem in adding ten thousand." ”
That is to say, even if GAC Toyota's current planned production capacity of 800,000 vehicles seems to have been exhausted, it is like "water in a sponge", and there is always a squeeze.
However, according to the understanding of the automobile industry and economics, GAC Toyota's production capacity planning for the Xena is currently about 3,000 vehicles, and the peak can reach 5,000 vehicles.
What made GAC Toyota choose not to build more Syna?
A consultant familiar with GAC Toyota told us that when planning products, manufacturers will definitely consider the balance between volume models and profit models.
He said: "The annual sales target needs to be completed by the number of models, and there are also objective constraints of the double point policy, but on the other hand, no dealer is willing to sell a car that loses money." ”
Under the GAC Toyota system, Zhixuan, Zhixiang and Leiling are "volume models", while Highlander and Sai are "profit models".
Like highlanders, the past two generations of models have maintained mark-up sales almost throughout their entire life cycle, and there are almost no discounts until they are delisted, achieving high sales quality, retention rate and word of mouth in the market.
As Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Association, said: "The price increase is an objective result of the market supply and demand and the consumption mentality, but at the same time, the manufacturer does have the ability to control a 'micro-tight balance' between supply and demand, so that the market terminal can maintain a relatively good price and profit." ”
Obviously, at a time when Highlander's market segment began to be more challenged and competitive, GAC Toyota hoped that Xena could replicate Highlander's success in the blue ocean of MPV.
NO.4
[The End of the Markup Era]
Xena is not gazing Toyota's first terminal price increase, and Highlander's "legend" in the market has been for many years.
Since the listing of the new fourth-generation Highlander last year, GAC Toyota has repeatedly promoted its online order system at the communication level, which has the advantages of "online booking - convenient, online queuing - fair, visual process - peace of mind, clear delivery - transparent" and so on.
In the actual car purchase process, users also need to pay for "scheduling" online through the "GAC Toyota Fengyunxing" App, and then sign a car purchase contract with the dealer. At the same time, you can also check the number of vehicles for sale and production schedule of each dealership in the app. Weisa, which just went public in January this year, also adopted the same ordering method.
However, in the "Fengyunxing" App, Xena can only pay the "intention gold" that can be refunded and does not have the qualification to queue, and the actual price and delivery time are still subject to the dealer.
GAC Toyota, which originally intended to curb the chaos of Highlander's price increase by ordering cars online, failed to hold back the impulse to make money on Sai Na, but unfortunately it backfired.
In the eyes of Sun Shaojun, the founder of car fans with rich experience in the sales line, it is a perfectly normal thing for Sai Na to resume affordable sales in a short period of time, "I have told Toyota's friends a long time ago, but unfortunately it is still highly optimistic, then there is no way." ”
There are not many models in the current market that can insist on price increases, such as some models of Buick GL8, Toyota Alpha, Mercedes-Benz S-Class, G-Class, etc.
Why can these models continue to keep prices firm? The first three belong to the positioning of the B-end market, the company, enterprise users account for a larger proportion, non-price sensitive users, such as Alpha annual insurance volume half of the company's name.
From a financial point of view, in addition to realizing the use of the vehicle itself, the company's car purchase can also be used as a production input for VAT deduction, used car sales as income, and even when the debt is repaid, it can also be used as "hard currency" collateral.
And the big G belongs to the "rich people's toys", and Audi RS, BMW M3, how can rich people care about hundreds of thousands of price increases?
But apparently, Xena doesn't have that property.
A sales consultant at Guangqi Honda in Beijing advised us when we consulted the Odyssey: "When you buy a 7-seater car, you want to know what the real needs are." Is it really necessary to spend 500,000 yuan to buy an MPV, just for the sake of more space? 500,000 are spent, why can't you buy a car? ”
In fact, many consumers who buy a car with 7 seats, in the process of actually using the car, the use of the third row of seats is not very high, and under the emergency demand, the space is larger or smaller, and it seems that it is not worth the difference of more than 100,000 yuan.
In the previous article, the 4S store sales in Anhui province said in reply to the auto sankei: "Hyundai Kusitu and Kia Kahua, which rose in the same period, are very competitive, and the advantage of Xena is not obvious except for the hybrid." Coupled with the fact that the MPV market share itself is not large, GL8 relies on word of mouth, and sales are still unshakable. In addition, most middle-income households generally do not accept the markup, which leads to the sales difficulties of Xena. Even if the 4S store resumes affordable car pick-up in the later stage, the impact on the user's car purchase expectations in the early stage cannot be improved in the short term. ”
Obviously, the era of price increases like volkswagen Tiguan and Honda CR-V is gone.
Sun Shaojun believes: "Today's automobile market has long been a buyer's market, with the growth of competitors and new power brands, traditional brands are no longer strong, and the brand premium has shrunk significantly. ”
Perhaps Xena's product power itself surpasses that of GAC Trumpchi GM8, Honda Odyssey and Kia Kahua, but it is not as strong as luxury brands or Alpha, making most consumers willing to pay far more than the competition.
Even the next FAW Toyota's same model, the MPV named "Crown Verlu" on the Internet, will soon arrive. Faw Toyota insiders also revealed to the Auto Industry and Economics that the off-line time of this new car is planned in September, but it is also catching up with the golden nine silver ten in "rushing time". In addition, in the recent "Tianjin News", it was also revealed that faw Toyota New Energy Automobile Factory in the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city will produce the same MPV of Xena.
The American Sena XSE sports version may be imported into FAW Toyota's domestic production
In fact, there are not many companies and dealers similar to GAC Toyota with "careful thinking", but they have also been educated by reality.
Also in the MPV market, Weiran, which was determined to impact GL8, also had a high public opinion heat and the expectation of terminal price increases at the beginning of the listing. However, with the release of post-listing sales data, the terminal price has gradually calmed down.
Or such a strong brand as Mercedes-Benz C-class, at the beginning of the launch of the new generation of products also rumored the expectation of price increase, but the reality is that the 4S store sales frankly: "Don't say the price increase, now the guidance price without discount is enough for users to complain." ”
Many front-line sales practitioners admit that today's consumers actually have a more calm understanding of products and prices, and the rapid rollout of new forces and direct sales models has also made many consumers more disgusted with the "hunger marketing" of traditional 4S stores.
Looking at the price increase and price reduction process of Xena from a panoramic perspective, we will find that when the entire market is undergoing restructuring from technology to channels, even Toyota, which has always been experienced, will misjudge the situation. The failure of the Xena markup is not a marketing failure of a model, but a failure of an old set of game rules.
From Xena's body, we can see the mistakes and dislocations of traditional car companies. But thinking about these mistakes and misalignments makes Xena's case not only a small "joke" in the history of automobile sales, but also a big "nourishment" that can be drawn.