Looking back at 2021, the lack of cores, extreme weather and repeated epidemics have had a more complex and far-reaching impact on the overall automotive industry. On the one hand, the epidemic and lack of cores have caused the cost of raw materials to rise, which has posed a great challenge to the supply chain of car companies. On the other hand, it has also allowed the vast majority of car companies to reduce production or even stop production of some models, which has broken the original balance between supply and demand, increased terminal prices, and further reduced consumers' desire to buy in addition to the impact of the epidemic.
It is also based on these unfavorable factors that the test of 2021 is no longer only the product competitiveness of a car company, but also a test of the synergy within the car company and between the car company and the dealer.
In 2021, FAW-Volkswagen Audi's annual delivery volume continued to stabilize at more than 700,000 units, consolidating the market base, and FAW-Volkswagen Audi helped the proportion of Sales in the Chinese market in Audi to continue to increase to nearly 42%, breaking through the market dilemma with a steady attitude. At the same time, last year, FAW-Volkswagen Audi led Audi's cumulative sales in China to exceed the 7 million mark, becoming the first and only luxury car brand to achieve this milestone.
Behind this, it not only reflects that FAW-Volkswagen Audi has won the favor and trust of consumers through a more comprehensive and competitive product matrix in 2021, but also shows that Audi has helped the Audi brand to go steady and far-reaching through digital transformation, innovative marketing methods and forward-looking business strategies in the treacherous market environment.
| Looking back at 2021, with the "gathering momentum to open up the new" response bureau
In the challenging year of 2021, we can see FAW-Volkswagen Audi riding the wind and waves, and through the implementation of the new strategic layout of "gathering momentum and starting the new", it has become a model benchmark in the luxury car market in the transition period.
With the increasingly obvious diversified needs of Chinese auto consumers and the rapid rise in the proportion of younger consumers, car companies need a more perfect product matrix to meet and stimulate the consumer demand of china's auto market. For FAW-Volkswagen Audi, through the "gathering momentum" to allow it to aggregate potential energy such as products, brands, and new energy in 2021, it has laid a solid foundation for Audi's stable business strategy.
At the product level, FAW-Volkswagen Audi built an unprecedented lineup of new cars last year, covering the A-class to D segments. From the new Audi A3 family launched at the beginning of last year, and the subsequent Q5L, Q2L and other medium-term redesign models, it can be seen that FAW-Volkswagen Audi is trying to meet the diversified needs of consumers, and at the same time indirectly driving consumer demand with further enhanced configurations.
In addition, in the critical period of electrification transformation, two domestic Audi e-tron and e-tron Sportback products also ushered in the market in April last year, bringing users a new experience of electric luxury travel. The Q2L e-tron, which was subsequently launched, gave young consumers more new options in electric luxury models.
Last year, high-performance products such as RS 6, RS 7, RS Q8, and R8 in the Audi RS King Dynamite Group were listed one after another. As the leader of China's high-performance market segment, the R/RS series models not only mean performance and glory, but also the product sequence that best represents "extreme performance" and "charm experience" among the four pillars of Audi's new brand strategy. The launch of four high-performance products from FAW-Volkswagen Audi has brought users a more extreme performance and elegant and distinguished travel experience.
Audi A4Avant, A4 allroad, A6 Avant and A6 allroad, which are known as the most beautiful "crock pots", also ushered in a special edition listing last year, providing more choices for the diversified consumer needs of Chinese consumers.
In 2021, as a big year for brands, major car companies are strengthening and consolidating their image in the hearts of consumers. In the view of this reporter, FAW-Volkswagen Audi launched a brand strategy renewal in Audi globally last year, creating a "new Audi" image in the minds of consumers through systematic marketing activity planning, which makes FAW-Volkswagen Audi more focused on youth and digitalization, laying a solid foundation for its development this year.
Specifically, FAW-Volkswagen Audi created a music-themed "New Audi Q5L Freedom Night" activity last year for the new Audi Q5L innovation, through the fusion of freedom, music and cars, so that the "most free listing conference" resonates with young consumers, which has triggered a relatively hot market response.
In addition, FAW-Volkswagen Audi and Zhizu GQ jointly created the "Sea Track RS Combustion Night" last year, and the 8 models of the Audi RS high-performance family debuted for the first time. In order to allow more performance cars to feel the dynamic passion of the sea track and the ultimate performance charm of the Audi R/RS "Wang Dynamite Group" for the first time, FAW-Volkswagen Audi also broadcast the whole track experience through the audi official live broadcast platform - Audi Channel. As the first official live broadcast platform of luxury brands for lifestyle "planting grass", Audi Channel breaks through space restrictions and continuously broadcasts through multi-scene real-time interaction and heavy surprises, forming a track carnival of online and offline full-line linkage.
It can be seen that FAW-Volkswagen Audi has more "hard power" in 2021 when it develops in 2022 through "gathering momentum", and in terms of "soft power", FAW-Volkswagen Audi has achieved rapid advancement of digital transformation through "Qixin", bringing users more digital pleasure experience.
Wu Yingqiu, chairman and CEO of Huanqiu Automobile Group, once said: "For automobile companies, the most important thing in the new automobile 2.0 era is efficiency. "In today's external environment of rapid development of the automotive market and unfavorable factors, digital transformation can be described as an important means for car companies to improve user experience and internal efficiency.
In this regard, FAW-Volkswagen Audi achieved the launch of seven Tencent service applications such as the WeChat car version last year, and the Audi model also achieved OTA upgrades. Not only that, FAW-Volkswagen Audi has also created the first user personalized customization platform in the luxury car market, covering all domestic models, improving the user experience through intelligent and efficient customized services, and giving users a product experience of "thousands of faces".
At the same time, FAW-Volkswagen Audi has also created an Audi cloud listening system covering the digital management platform of 5 loud source channels. The system is currently one of the most advanced digital user management platforms in the industry. Based on the above platform, FAW-Volkswagen Audi can observe the pain points in the customer experience in real time, so as to achieve the service goal of 100% resolution of customer complaints within one day.
Brand social responsibility is the cornerstone of an enterprise to become bigger and stronger, how to combine sales and social responsibility, balance the pursuit of profit and social responsibility relationship, is every brand in the process of growth can not avoid the problem. The brand's fulfillment of social responsibility not only helps to enhance its image reputation and brand competitiveness, promote business success, but also reflects the brand values, unites customers and achieves long-term development.
In 2021, FAW-Volkswagen Audi actively fulfilled its corporate social responsibility and joined hands with the China Children and Teenagers Foundation to accumulate new strength for the "Spring Bud Project • Dream of the Future" action. On July 29 last year, the "Spring Bud Dream Growth Camp" was launched in Beijing, and 50 spring bud girls from Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture in Hubei Province participated in the study and practice activities, so far, the "Spring Bud Dream Growth Camp" has successfully completed the third phase of the project. In the subsequent "Spring Bud Dream Choir" public welfare project, FAW-Volkswagen Audi invited relevant institutions and experts to provide professional artistic guidance to ensure that all girls enrolled in the group can receive high-level vocal education.
In addition, Audi's overall perception score of brand image has continued to rise to the highest level in the past 5 years driven by a series of innovative marketing, and the brand familiarity score has continued to rank first in the luxury car market; at the same time, it has achieved the "after-sales service satisfaction" championship in the J.D. Power luxury car market for 9 consecutive years.
From these, it can be seen that whether it is in the field of fuel oil or new energy, FAW-Volkswagen Audi is relying on its century-old technology accumulation and quality to meet the diversified needs of Chinese consumers on the basis of an innovative attitude to meet the future turbulent market environment. With products to further consolidate the foundation of future development, and with luxury quality to win the trust and recognition of its 7 million+ users.
| Open a new pattern with "Yijin Innovation"
From the new energy products and layouts released by major car companies in 2021, it can be seen that with the rapid development of the new energy wave, luxury brands have fully entered the field of electrification. For FAW-Volkswagen Audi, it will make all-round efforts in products, brands and user experiences with the business strategy of "Yijin Innovation" under the strong foundation already built in 2021.
In the view of the "Auto Dealer Daily", Audi's product planning has always been interlocked. This year, FAW-Volkswagen Audi will take the brand flagship - the new Audi A8LHorch founder's edition, electric flagship - e-tron GT "double flagship" as the lead, with more than 18 new product lineups, to bring users a "family barrel" product experience.
Among them, the new Audi A8L Horch founder edition named after one of audi's founders occupies a place for Audi in the top luxury car market, while the e-tron GT brings a high-performance and more personalized sports model to the new energy market, and has also become an important driving force for the sustainable development of FAW-Volkswagen Audi.
So far, FAW-Volkswagen Audi has a powerful product that can compete with other luxury brands in both the fuel vehicle market and the new energy market, which once again highlights the transformation of FAW-Volkswagen Audi from "large and complete" product planning to "fine and fine" thinking.
At the same time, strengthening the brand image will also be the focus of Audi's efforts this year. Our reporter learned from the FAW-Volkswagen Audi official that FAW-Volkswagen Audi will drive the "new Audi" brand image this year and create a brand night activity before the Beijing Auto Show. In addition, it will also collaborate with global resources to promote the landing of the four major brand topics of design, digitalization, performance and sustainability, so as to form a stronger competitiveness for the development of the Audi brand this year.
In terms of user experience, FAW-Volkswagen Audi will rely on digital means to build a 360-degree online car viewing platform to meet the real-time interaction needs of users with richer online service scenarios. And promote the transformation of dealer showrooms offline, by the end of 2022, a total of 451 showrooms have been upgraded to achieve a target achievement rate of nearly 80%. At the same time, the construction of 9 urban exhibition halls was launched to meet the different preferences of users for brand experience.
In addition, Audi is also actively involved in various sports events, accelerating the testing of electrification technology and promoting the use of mass production. In 2022, Audi participated in the Dakar Rally with the electric racing car RS Q e-tron, and three Audi RS Q e-tron cars all finished with a brilliant performance in the debut of the Dakar Rally, and Audi will also return to the 24 Hours of Le Mans this year with a new electrified power car, laying the foundation for Audi's leading position in electrification technology.
In order to further improve business efficiency, FAW-Volkswagen Audi will continue to upgrade EPs from both ends of products and operations, and at the same time rely on 3 new business areas and 300 new standardized indicators to achieve data domain-wide. In addition, FAW-Volkswagen Audi will accelerate the improvement of the integrated platform in 2022, achieving the milestone of more than 6 million private domain users and more than 3 million registered users of FAW Audi APP, which marks that the digital intelligent management and operation level of FAW-Volkswagen Audi will reach a new height this year.
Conclusion: In the view of "AutoMotive Business Daily", the reason why FAW-Volkswagen Audi can still develop steadily in the treacherous market environment is behind its technical reserves and product advantages, but also its forward-looking layout and all-dimensional benign development.
In the critical period of electrification change, FAW-Volkswagen Audi conforms to the development trend of the times and continuously explores innovative fields such as digitalization, electrification and intelligence. While meeting the full-value needs of consumers, it also allows more consumers to perceive the technology, low-carbon and innovative electric travel lifestyle. Facing 2022, FAW-Volkswagen Audi is forging ahead, and under the new trend of the electrification era, with products and technologies as the core, it will occupy an important position in the electrification of luxury brands.