Friends who often watch the news of the automotive industry, I don't know if you remember that at the end of 2019, a small thing happened to Lexus.
A brief review of that event. At the end of 2019, the Jiangsu Provincial Market Supervision and Administration Bureau issued an administrative penalty decision, toyota China's sales behavior violated Article 14 of the Anti-Monopoly Law, and decided to impose a fine of 87.613 million yuan in accordance with the penalty provisions of Article 49 of the Anti-Monopoly Law.
Saying that it is not a big problem, because it has only fined less than 90 million yuan, which is a drizzle for Lexus. It is not a small problem to say that it is a problem, because this incident has a great impact on the brand reputation of Lexus, after all, it is a violation of the Anti-Monopoly Law and is suspected of price increase.
In fact, although Lexus's suspected markup behavior has been exposed from time to time, consumers seem to be accustomed to such a means, preferring to add some money to buy Lexus rather than choose BBA. In the eyes of many people, Lexus is low-key, but it is also more prominent, which is not comparable to the BBA of bad street.
It is true that Xiaobian also believes that Lexus is a good car, but it will never recognize this suspected price increase. However, it is really resentful that the 315 party has continued to do so many years, why not expose such problems?
Fortunately, the theme of the 315 party in 2022 is "fair and righteous, safe consumption", from the perspective of fairness and integrity, Xiaobian guesses that the possibility of this time's 315 party exposing false publicity, price increases, etc., is very large!
It is worth noting that some car complaint websites have recently complained about Lexus's suspected price increase. For example, on the "Auto Complaint Network", a prospective car owner said: "Booking a car in November 2021, agreeing to deliver the car in February 2022, and now replying to May can not deliver the car, booking is mandatory to buy 30,000 yuan decoration, otherwise do not sell the car." ”
Generally speaking, even if the 4S store intends to let consumers increase the price of the car, it will not directly pay the cash markup, but adopt a similar purchase of decoration to cover up the price increase, which is also legal. Finally, one is willing to fight and one is willing to be beaten, even if the relevant departments intervene in the investigation, it is difficult to find out why.
It should be noted that before the ticket from Jiangsu Province was issued, there was a personnel change in Lexus. At that time, Li Hui, who was also the executive deputy general manager of GAC Toyota, succeeded Daitake Ren as the executive deputy general manager of Lexus China.
For the personnel change that time, for the future direction of Lexus, the industry has two speculations, one is that Lexus is getting closer and closer to domestic production, and the other is that Lexus's price increase behavior will become history. However, more than two years later, these two speculations have never had a definite answer, and even Lexus's market performance has become more and more weak, and the growth rate has slowed down. Li Hui became the number one Chinese leader in Lexus, and it is not known what changes he has made.
Auto network review: fair and correct, mark-up behavior or will be made public
The theme of this year's 315 evening party is "fair and upright, safe consumption", before the start of the party, the program group also mentioned that "to boost the confidence of market entities, stimulate the vitality of market players, further promote the implementation of fair competition policies, strengthen anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition, ensure fair competition with fair supervision, and create a good environment for the competitive development of enterprises of all kinds of ownership". If lexus has violated the Antitrust Law and continues to be complained about the mark-up, will Lexus be on the list and where will it go in the future?