Text/to Han Song
It seems that overnight, the automobile market in China has changed from the least competitive market to the most competitive market. 10 years ago, China was dominated by Santana, Jetta and Fukang. However, after 10 years, there are more than 200 competitors in the market, and almost every price range has more than ten models with a unit of ten thousand yuan. As Ding Lei, general manager of Shanghai General Motors, lamented: "No country's consumers have such differentiated consumer demand as China; No country's automobile market is as diversified and subdivided as China. " Now, all automobile manufacturers are thinking about a problem: the market is too crowded to be further subdivided, how to find a new market segment?
The Driving Force of Segmentation: Consumer Fragmentation
Before discussing this issue, we should first study a question: Why should we segment the market? The answer is simple: consumer demand is beginning to diversify. The problem seems to be here. But from the perspective of automobile marketing, this answer is too conceptual and is "correct nonsense". To explore the real driving force of segmentation, we must consider automobile consumption from the macro perspective of the whole social transformation.
According to the principle of sociology, when the per capita GDP of a country is between 1000 ~ 3000 dollars, the whole society will accelerate the transformation from the traditional unitary structure society to the diversified modern society. With the rapid popularization of the Internet and the diversification of communication modes, the whole society will change from "diversification" to "fragmentation", which is reflected in the consumption field, that is, consumers are divided into "fragments" because of differences in values and aesthetic needs, and when these "fragments" produce purchase behavior, they form market segments.
It can be said that at present, domestic automobile manufacturers are facing a gradually "fragmented" market. On the one hand, the traditional consumption concept and aesthetic taste still dominate, which is reflected in the fact that the sales of traditional models such as Santana, Jetta and Li Xia continue to maintain a high level; On the other hand, emerging urban white-collar workers, petty bourgeoisie, pop artists and other classes have risen rapidly, and personalized models are increasingly favored by them.
For example, the current market is like a rag. Its edges have been torn by personalized models, and the largest area in the middle is crowded with competitors. In order to win more market share, these competitors are expanding their power through the differentiation of brand, price, appearance and configuration, which leads to cracks in this largest area and presents a fragmentation trend. Take the mid-level car market with the largest market share of 65,438+0,000 ~ 200,000 yuan as an example, it is crowded with such heavyweight models as Excelle, Corolla, Civic, Peugeot 307, Familia, Bora, Sagitar, Golf, Cheng Jing, Mondeo, Passat, Skoda Ming Rui, Mazda 3 and mazda 6. After some melee, this market has also been divided into small units, and the era of one, two or three models can no longer appear.
To be sure, with the simultaneous acceleration of consumer fragmentation and the launch of new models, the trend of automobile market segmentation will not stop, and its pace will only get faster and faster. How to find their own market segments has become a life-and-death problem for all manufacturers.
Several misunderstandings about market segmentation
Now, all automobile manufacturers realize the importance of market segmentation. Every time a new model goes on the market, the manufacturer will claim that it has set a new benchmark for a certain "market segment". However, in the actual operation process, there are still many misunderstandings among automobile manufacturers.
One of the misunderstandings: subdividing the market by price
Looking at the marketing strategy of each new car before it goes on the market, we can find a basic routine: first aim at one or several mainstream models, and then overwhelm the opponent in price and configuration (in fact, price). For example, Camry's pricing is firmly tied to the new Accord, and Camry is also an imaginary enemy before LaCrosse pushes a new car. Civic's market positioning is no different from Corolla's. Although these models claimed to have opened up new market segments before listing, they actually took the road of price war.
The biggest advantage of market segmentation by price is that it can give consumers a very clear positioning. There are also some successful cases in this regard. For example, Sail successfully cut into the 6,543.8+10,000 yuan family car market originally controlled by "Lao San" through the brand positioning of "6,543.8+10,000 yuan Buick". However, the current market situation is that no price range is blank, and every price range of 10,000 yuan unit is crowded with various models, and the role of price war is getting smaller and smaller. Taking 2006 as an example, none of the top ten sales models are new models, but all are old models, which shows that many new models have not really gained obvious advantages in their respective market segments.
Since price is not the only weapon in market segmentation, what can manufacturers do? I think we should seek differentiation from the perspective of satisfying consumers' psychological needs through appearance, performance, brand and service. Taking Bora as an example, its positioning is "the driver's car", which highlights the handling performance, thus playing its own sky in the mid-level car market. Its follow-up models are also taking the road of performance, shouting the slogan of "being strong" and winning the love of consumers who pursue speed and maneuverability.
Myth 2: The market can be infinitely subdivided.
Theoretically speaking, the market can be infinitely subdivided, because consumers' needs are diverse, and what kind of demand there is, there will be what kind of market segments. This statement does sound like the implementation of the "consumer-centered" marketing concept, but it may hit a wall in practice. Why? Because the automobile is a large-scale industry, only by reaching a certain capacity can the manufacturing cost be effectively reduced. Without a certain sales volume as the basis, segmentation is meaningless.
The most typical negative case is the two-door version of GOL launched by Shanghai Volkswagen. Goyle's prototype is very popular in Brazil. Simple configuration, low price, suitable for modification, so it is very popular with urban single youth. It stands to reason that there are many single young people who like to modify cars in some large and medium-sized cities in China, and Shanghai Volkswagen also believes that it will be welcomed after the introduction. Unexpectedly, after the launch, this car without air conditioning and radio was ridiculed by the media as a "naked car". After the listing, the sales volume was extremely poor, and now it is in a state of suspension.
Similarly, personalized cars such as Peugeot 206 and Citroen C2 are also unpopular because the target market is too narrow. Therefore, the degree of market segmentation should not be too narrow and the brand positioning should not be too advanced. We must try our best to find the market segment with the largest sales volume while ensuring the differentiation advantage.
Myth 3: Market segments can be created.
Since the automobile market has been packed with various models and can't be subdivided, some manufacturers have found another way to create a new market segment, which is to "find the blue ocean" in fashionable words. This kind of thinking is right, but the result of practice is often that the market segments created by ourselves are not supported by real demand, so they only stay at the conceptual level.
There is a case in the United States: a manufacturer claims to develop a car specifically for homosexuals. At first glance, there seems to be a market because there are at least hundreds of thousands or even millions of homosexuals in the United States. Isn't this market segment very big? But what we see is that this model has not been listed yet. Obviously, homosexuals and ordinary consumers have no special preference in buying and using cars, and this market segment does not actually exist.
China also has such a case. In 2006, Huapu Automobile launched "Hyun Hyun", which is known as "the first female car in China". Conceptually, this market segment is really big, because almost half of the consumers are women. However, we should also see that the needs of female consumers are actually as complicated as those of male consumers. Women with different incomes, ages and cultures have different understandings of cars. Huapu Auto tried to meet the needs of all women with a "sea election" car, which can only be said to be a naive fantasy, and poor sales are inevitable.
Therefore, we can't subdivide for the sake of subdivision, and subdivision must be based on actual needs. But at present, many manufacturers still expect to create a market segment through an alternative concept. Various concepts such as "CUV", "NCV" and "MBV" are flying all over the sky, leaving consumers confused and disoriented.
How to deal with the trend of segmentation?
The extreme segmentation of the market has brought great challenges to automobile manufacturers. In the past, a manufacturer only needed one or two competitive main models to support most of the sales. But now most automobile manufacturers are forced to attack in all directions in different market segments and blossom in an all-round way. The consequence of this is that the design and manufacturing costs and marketing costs have risen sharply, and the profit rate has dropped sharply. From the experience of the international automobile industry, in order to cope with the trend of segmentation, major multinational automobile giants have adopted the following strategies, which may inspire China automobile enterprises.
■ Platform strategy
The platformization strategy of automobile means that in the process of automobile R&D and manufacturing, several models * * * use a technical platform, and the models produced may have different appearances and functions, but the chassis, engine technology and body structure are the same. Platform strategy can not only greatly reduce R&D costs, but also enhance the flexibility of manufacturing system, making it possible to produce multiple models on the same production line, thus greatly reducing manufacturing costs. More importantly, the same platform can evolve vehicles with different shapes and configurations to meet the needs of different market segments.
At present, several multinational giants have adopted the platform strategy. For example, Volkswagen launched PQ35 platform, and Sagitar, Magotan, Touran, Golf and Audi TT were all developed on this platform. Ford Focus, Volvo S40 and Mazda 3 also use the same technology platform, and Toyota Crown and Reiz also use the same platform.
A few years ago, some domestic independent brand car manufacturers had fewer models and no concept of product platform. With the expansion of production capacity, Chery, Geely and other manufacturers began to consciously establish their own product platforms, which is a good start.
■ Multi-brand strategy
Although the platform strategy solves the problem of occupying different market segments with different models, when all manufacturers are engaged in platform strategy, the homogenization of products is inevitable. In order to seek new differentiation advantages, manufacturers have to sacrifice the weapon of multi-brands, hoping to effectively distinguish consumer psychology and create new reasons for consumers to buy through the differences in values, aesthetic tastes and cultural concepts represented behind brands.
Nowadays, large multinational automobile giants such as General Motors.