In recent years, there is a popular word in the car circle - "dimensionality reduction strike", such as luxury brands lowering the threshold of entry models to squeeze the living space of second-tier luxury brands. To Jaguar Land Rover, which is known as an ultra-luxury brand, after joining hands with Chery to enter China in 2012, it also tried a similar approach, but even if it was sharply reduced, it did not receive obvious results, but it was ridiculed by some users. In fact, the root cause of Chery Jaguar Land Rover's poor sales is not the price, but the quality and service do not match their own positioning.
Jaguar Land Rover achieved sales of more than 100,000 vehicles in 2021, not to mention that compared with Mercedes-Benz BMW Audi, it is also significantly inferior to the top second-tier luxury brands. However, it is worth noting that of the sales of these 100,000 vehicles, the proportion of joint venture models is not as large as that of imported models. This is rare in China, indicating that Chery Jaguar Land Rover may have problems in the introduction, production and sales of models.
First, looking at the performance of Land Rover's two SUVs, Land Rover found that the Sport and Range Rover Evoques have certain shortcomings in the same class, with a short wheelbase and average spatial performance. It was found that the sport version had a wheelbase of 2741mm and a length of 4597mm, while the Range Rover Evoque had a wheelbase of only 2681mm before the wheelbase was lengthened, and the length was only a pitiful 4371mm. Just parked with the competitor model, the momentum lost a cut, doomed to take the niche route, sales have been tepid is reasonable.
Jaguar XEL and XFL sales were even more dismal, with monthly sales mostly under 1,000. Although the wheelbase of the two cars was lengthened early, in terms of various dimensional parameters, it will not lag behind the competitor models, but the front-facing rear-drive layout and the utilization rate of the body space are relatively general, so the performance of the interior space is not advantageous compared to the competing models. More importantly, there are some deficiencies in the matching of the engine and gearbox and in the suspension tuning, which is not the standard of a luxury car.
Chery Jaguar Land Rover's product quality problems are also one of the most criticized places for consumers, and many complaints about quality problems related to them can be found on the car quality network. These complaints have a common point, that is, there are body accessories and electrical failures, usually some small problems, although the driving safety will not cause great harm, but in daily use, the use experience will still be greatly affected.
Including Jaguar Land Rover executives, it is agreed that Jaguar Land Rover's market positioning is unclear. On the one hand, it wants to rely on its unique personality to attract users and maintain a niche luxury brand style; on the other hand, in order to pursue sales, blindly choose the way of price reduction promotion, which greatly damages the brand image, and the model retention rate is almost at the bottom of luxury brands.
Many people know that land rover models have particularly large discounts, but they don't know that land rover also has models sold at a higher price, and to this day, the phenomenon of price increases in the Range Rover and Defender series still exists, and these two car series reflect the core selling point of the Land Rover brand - niche high-end. Although the phenomenon of price increase is not worth advocating, it shows that land rover brand imported models still have a strong influence.
Write at the end
From the above analysis, it is not difficult to conclude that Jaguar Land Rover's high-end products should continue to tap niche personality traits, and entry-level products should honestly improve their cost performance and firmly grasp product quality, so as not to be seriously polarized and lose sight of one or the other. Do you agree with this view? (Text/UVIS Auto Ride)
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