At the beginning of 2024, BYD fired the first shot of price reduction in the domestic auto market, whether active or passive, car companies have to use the form of price for volume to compete for market share, and the price war broke out in an all-round way.
However, after entering the second half of the year, the direction of the auto market changed abruptly, BMW was the first to announce its withdrawal from the price war, and Mercedes-Benz and Audi, which wore a pair of pants with BMW, also followed suit and expressed their withdrawal from the price war. BBA's contrarian operation has aroused heated discussions among netizens, and many friends ridiculed BMW's "pill", but the follow-up developments have exceeded the imagination of netizens. So after the announcement of the price increase, what is BMW's market sales? Is it really the answer to the sentence buy up and not buy down? Let's talk about this incident today.
In BMW's product matrix, the BMW i3 is undoubtedly the model with the most considerable price reduction. Among them, at the beginning of June this year, the original price of about 350,000 yuan BMW i3 was directly sold at a six-fold discount, and the price of naked cars in some areas even fell to 170,000 yuan. Such an astonishing price reduction is staggering, and even the high-flying BMW has to face the cruel reality of selling one at a loss. What's even more embarrassing for BMW is that even if the price reduction is so relaxed, the brand's sales have not been significantly improved, and obviously, it makes no sense to continue like this.
Therefore, in the context of everyone's price reduction, BMW, which does not want to continue to consume, resolutely chose to raise the price. According to the information we have, BMW stores in some areas of Guangzhou have carried out a wave of price increases for all BMW models, compared with June, the increase of each model in July is between 0.3~30,000 yuan. Take BMW i3 as an example, the price of the naked car of the car has risen to more than 200,000 yuan, plus a series of expenses such as insurance, and the final landing price is more than 220,000 yuan.
In the process of reducing prices and raising prices, BMW's dealers have also made a lot of trouble. Some netizens mentioned that they need to increase the price by 1~30,000 yuan when picking up the car, and some have encountered problems such as no car source and must go through financial installments to pick up the car. Judging from the feedback from netizens, similar situations are not rare. For example, a Chongqing consumer signed a car purchase agreement with a BMW 4S store in May and paid a deposit in advance, and the model purchased was a BMW I3, with a naked car price of 174,500 yuan. When he was about to pick up the car, the consumer was suddenly told by the dealer that he needed to increase the price by 30,000 yuan, and after many negotiations, it was reduced to a price increase of 10,000 yuan to pick up the car, and finally he was told that there was no car to pay! I have to say that such an outrageous operation of a BMW dealer really makes people's blood pressure soar.
In any case, BMW has raised the price again this time, and what is even more surprising is that the brand's sales have also improved to a certain extent after the price increase. In the third week of July this year (July 15 to July 21), BMW's weekly sales reached 13,400 units, an increase of 1,400 units compared to the second week of July (July 8 to July 14). At the same time, Mercedes-Benz and Audi, which announced price increases along with BMW, also saw sales increases, with the two brands seeing weekly sales of 2,100 and 2,400 units in the third week of July and 2,400 units in the second week of July, respectively, even surpassing BMW.
So the question is, why did BBA's sales increase after the price increase? This phenomenon is indeed a bit counterintuitive, and after careful consideration, we have concluded that there are two reasons:
First, I am worried that the price will be higher in the future. The increase in price requires a process, it is impossible to pat the brain to increase a 5-60,000 yuan at once, some consumers who were still waiting to see the price just showed signs of starting to start, which can also be regarded as a kind of early consumption, to put it bluntly, is afraid that they will not be able to afford it in the future.
Second, it caters to the mentality of some Chinese people. Although I don't want to admit it, some Chinese people do have the mentality of buying up and not buying down, especially for luxury brands like BBA. No way, who let people have the blessing of the brand halo.
Uncle Che believes that the sales volume of BBA has risen instead of falling after the price increase, which reflects some characteristics of the luxury car market, which has the role of consumer psychology and brand effect. However, it is difficult to say how long this counterintuitive phenomenon will last, after all, we have only analyzed the situation in the third week of July. In fact, BMW's order volume in the second week of July fell by more than 30% compared with the first week of July, which means that the brand's sales increase in the third week of July may just be a normal fluctuation, but because of the premise of price increases, it affects the outside world's perception of these data. Of course, it is also possible that the increase in sales in the third week of July was due to a temporary increase in the data due to the centralized delivery of previously accumulated orders.
Uncle Che concluded
At present, the impact of BMW's price increase turmoil is still expanding, not only Mercedes-Benz and Audi are following up, but also many joint venture car companies are also ready to move. For example, in mid-July, Volkswagen, Toyota, Honda and other brands also decided to withdraw from the price war, and some brands said that they would adjust the terminal policy from July, reduce the preferential range, or stop further price reductions. It can be said that the current domestic auto market will face new changes, after many overseas car companies have withdrawn from the price war, where should our own brands go? Will we continue to grit our teeth and persist and eat away at the share of more overseas car companies, or will we stop and maintain the current situation? The curtain has been lifted, and let's wait and see.