[Introduction: Recently, the new car-making forces have successively announced the sales data in March, although the overall market is thriving, "Wei Xiaoli" has played steadily, and Leapmotor has sprung up, but Nezha Automobile is struggling, and the delivery of all vehicles has reached 8317 units, a year-on-year decrease of 17.55%. Previously, 360 founder Zhou Hongyi criticized Nezha's automobile marketing problems and suggested learning more from Xiaomi, which Nezha CEO Daniel Zhang humbly accepted. However, is the decline in sales of Nezha cars just a marketing issue?
Written by Cai Jialun, edited by He Zi
Although the price war in the new energy vehicle market is intensifying, many car companies still maintain the trend of sales growth, as one of the head car companies of the new car-making forces, Nezha is not too late to enter the industry, but compared with the younger generation of Wenjie and Leap Motors, its development momentum is much weaker.
In 2023, the delivery volume of Nezha Automobile will be 127496, a year-on-year decrease of 16.2%, becoming the only car company among the leading car-making forces with a year-on-year decline in sales. Combined with the recent events of Xiaomi's new car SU7 achieving a double harvest in popularity and sales, the senior management of Nezha Automobile has also taken a step forward in reflecting on marketing issues.
Nezha Automobile's marketing should be hard
For many enterprises, marketing is king has always been a wise saying, but Nezha Automobile's marketing still has a long way to go. As a member of the new car-making forces, Nezha Automobile's most popular publicity seems to be still in the release period of the movie "Nezha: The Demon Boy Descends to the World", which is not difficult to explain that Zhou Hongyi, the strategic investor of Nezha Automobile, mentioned the naming of Nezha products and marketing planning and other related issues on the live broadcast of Nezha's production line. Nezha Automobile CEO Daniel Zhang deeply reflected on this, and personally went into battle to directly attack the marketing highland, and the management of Nezha Automobile's overall marketing company carried out drastic optimization, which shows Daniel Zhang's importance to marketing. Whether Daniel Zhang repeatedly posted on his personal social platform to mention Nezha Automobile's marketing problems, or Zhou Hongyi pointed out in the live broadcast room that marketing should learn from Xiaomi, it finally revolves around a core point: Nezha Automobile's own product strength is strong enough, and the difference is that it can't tell stories. But if the root cause of the decline in Nezha's automobile sales is excavated, the formation of the current situation is not just a marketing pot.
Difficulty in going up is Nezha's pain
Nezha Automobile's rapid exit from the circle mainly lies in its high cost performance and youthfulness, for the young consumer groups that account for a large proportion of car buyers, Nezha V and Nezha U have attracted a lot of attention with the core point of "large quantity and fullness", and many young consumers are still attracted by the rich scientific and technological configuration and sportiness when comparing Nezha V such as 100,000-level new energy models. It can be said that Nezha Automobile, which focuses on cost performance, started with low-end models, and there are few opponents of Nezha V among the 100,000-yuan new energy vehicles, which is why Nezha Automobile can win the title of new power sales champion in 2022 with a sales volume of more than 150,000 units, which was considered a dark horse with an immeasurable future at that time.
Nezha Automobile, which is invincible in the low-end market, has also been put on an invisible "tight spell", once it is crowned with a cost-effective brand image by consumers, it means that it will lose a large number of high-end car consumers. Nezha Automobile launched high-end models Nezha S and Nezha GT in the follow-up, focusing on high-end sports performance, but it was not bought by consumers, and sales have been unsatisfactory since its listing.
The bottleneck of the high-end market that is difficult to break through has become the biggest pain point of Nezha Automobile, but the low-end market that Nezha Automobile is very confident in has also begun to have a crisis, and the average monthly sales of Nezha's compact SUV Nezha X are about 3,000 units, and it can no longer reproduce the glory of Nezha V's monthly sales of more than 10,000 units. Maintaining the fundamentals of the low-end market and impacting the high-end market has become the top priority for Nezha to break through.
Actively look for breakthroughs
Although Nezha Automobile is facing many challenges, it is also actively seeking a way out, and with the increasingly fierce competition in the domestic new energy market, Nezha Automobile has also begun to focus its strategic attention on overseas markets. In 2023, Nezha Automobile's overseas sales will exceed 20,000 units, which is also a big step, and it is currently building two factories in Thailand and Indonesia, and plans to put into operation a third plant in Malaysia next year, radiating the Southeast Asian region. At the same time, Nezha Automobile also has its own advantages in self-developed technology, such as the in-depth layout of the Shanhai Platform 2.0 and the self-developed intelligent driving assistance system that has achieved the landing, which have become the greatest confidence for Nezha Automobile to master its own core product strength.
As an "old" new force in car manufacturing, Nezha Automobile has achieved a comprehensive closed loop in self-production and self-research, whether it is technology research and development or processing and manufacturing of vehicles and core components, Nezha Automobile has advantages. From the current point of view, Nezha Automobile has indeed fallen into a downturn, but if it can survive the fierce price war, there may be a glimmer of opportunity in the future.
Comments
The crux of Nezha's declining sales is not only a marketing problem, but also the chaotic rhythm of new and old product replacement, the failure to break through the high-end market, and the weak sense of participation in the price war, all of which are the reasons for Nezha Automobile's regression. However, Daniel Zhang has realized these problems and made adjustments, I wonder if there is still a chance in the new energy track where the experts are like forests?
(This article is the original of "Heyan Reading Cars", and may not be reproduced without authorization)