Article | Zhao Lingwei

If a friend asks you to use NIO, please believe the reason he says, because he will not get a penny in kickback from NIO. Even so, NIO’s referral rate this year was as high as 69%.

Not only in regular channels, but also in live broadcast channels with limited-time low prices as a gimmick, NIO has not cut prices. Not long ago, NIO Chairman Li Bin conducted a "soulless" live broadcast with Hunan Satellite TV hosts Wang Han and Li Rui.

Without any discounts, the 40-minute live broadcast*** received 20.64 million cumulative views, making it the most popular Taobao live broadcast that night. The live broadcast *** reached large deposits for 320 NIO ES 8 new cars, and 5,288 test drive appointments were made, locking in sales of approximately 128 million yuan, and the remaining influence pushed this number to 150 million yuan.

A little calculation can show that with the ES8’s price range of 338,000-500,000 yuan, Hunan Satellite TV’s gold medal anchors have not been able to beat the price of NIO.

In contrast, under the attack of the cold winter of the auto market and the epidemic, many brand dealers have consciously discounted and dumped goods. This is also a routine operation of dealers in recent years. Faced with discounts of tens of thousands for models in the same price range, Weilai is one of the few independent luxury brands that can stabilize prices in the price range of 300,000-500,000.

In this market where floating discounts have become the norm, some people have suggested that if Weilai can conduct a wave of promotional activities, sales may rise to a new level.

For similar suggestions, Weilai’s heart is the same as the price.

1

Dealer’s “Discount Trap”

“In the past, when a friend came to me to buy a car, I would definitely go to the dealer for a discount, and I could get a very good deal. At the time, my friend was very grateful to me for the deep discount. But at the end of the month, he discovered that there was a "fragmented price" on the market. My friend was furious and thought I was being unfair and unfair. "An industry insider told me. Automobile Sankei tells about his previous experience.

Although OEMs have been trying to control unified prices, even if they adjust, they still want to make adjustments under enterprise-level macro-control. But this is basically fruitless under the dealer-agent system.

Due to different conditions such as brand, region, scale, etc., dealers will receive different business policies from manufacturers. In order to strive for a more profitable business policy ladder, they will give up short-term selling price benefits and reduce prices to get more sales.

So, at the end of the month, dealers will attack high-level business policies, inflate prices, lose money and sell goods to get the manufacturer's incentives. Therefore, every consumer can get a discount, but there may be a lower discount. Moreover, the preferential prices given by different sales may be different, and the prices in different periods may also be different.

In addition, competition among dealers of the same brand causes price cuts, "because it is easiest to steal food from your own people." If larger dealers want more sales, they will first think of grabbing them from dealers of the same brand. Larger dealers will give up some profits for this and directly eat up the sales of these small dealers. This is actually harmful to car companies.

You must know that the cold winter of the car market in the past two years caused ridiculous price changes in the market. Jaguar Land Rover barely survived with a concession of less than 30% off, and Cadillac offered a profit margin of nearly 100,000 yuan to attract business. In addition, Guangdong Hongyue Group once bought out 7,000 Alfa Romeo inventories at one time, and with the manufacturer's acquiescence, sold them at a price of 6.5% off the purchase price, and publicized them vigorously, which led to a national price collapse, 4S stores and car owners collectively. riot.

From the perspective of consumers, is it really "earned"? From a real long-term perspective, perhaps not. Because this so-called discount is based on the opaque price system.

Discounts only make consumers have an impulse at the moment of buying a car, and they are a means to promote sales. Consumers feel that they have benefited, but in fact it is just a little greed that has been taken advantage of.

In addition to the manufacturer's business policies, dealers' more profit points are in after-sales service. Therefore, various expenses such as excessive maintenance and financial service fees will also take a lot of "wool" from consumers. In addition, brands with unstable prices have poor value retention rates in the second-hand car market, which will also affect consumers' subsequent interests and harm the brand's positioning.

Dealers are a profit-making entity. OEMs have no right to demand the meticulousness of each service offered by dealers, and they will not sacrifice their profits for this purpose. The dealer model must first ensure its own profitability and cannot protect the rights and interests of users. When the market is sluggish, it will hurt users more to remedy themselves.

The dealer model is indeed a logical business model in the seller's market period, which is both efficient and flexible. But when the market supply exceeds demand, some dealers are eager for quick success and quick profit in order to survive, forming a vicious circle.

The "2019 Automobile Dealership Survival Status Survey Report" released by the China Automobile Dealers Association this year shows that the overall dealer satisfaction score in 2019 was 78.1 points, a significant decrease of 1.2 points from the previous year; the completion of the full year in 2019 The proportion of dealers with sales targets is only 28.9%, and another 7.4% of dealers have a target completion rate of less than 50%. Compared with 2018, dealers' losses expanded to 41.0% in 2019, and the loss ratio increased significantly. The proportion of profitable dealers decreased to 29.7%.

2

Users prefer to buy value for money rather than sell cheaply

Even so, as market competition intensifies, price wars are still intensifying. Consumers have become accustomed to dealers offering discounts and will inevitably have higher expectations when it comes to bargaining. However, it has been difficult for dealers to give customers satisfactory discounts, and even put themselves in an existential crisis because of this vicious cycle.

When the "spoiled" consumers begin to feel bored by the "one trick" price reduction, and turn more attention to quality, technology and brand, they don't even say "goodbye" I would say something to such dealers.

Since the first half of this year, due to the impact of the epidemic, the sales of most car companies have fallen severely. The current situation of losing money on each sale has also made dealers unwilling to fight.

Li Bin once said a pretty universal "funny" saying: Many common things are not necessarily taken for granted. The dealer model has existed since the birth of the Chinese automobile industry, and it is an absolutely mainstream model. However, times have changed, and it is also a historical necessity that the dealer and 4S store models will no longer be stable.

On the contrary, NIO, which insists on not cutting prices, has seen its sales rising. From January to June, NIO’s cumulative sales were 14,169 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 87.9%, of which June sales were 3,740 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 179.1%.

The so-called dealer network is to use society’s money to invest in channels, but it will take several years to return the principal and interest to the dealers.

NIO’s direct sales model is the basis for adhering to a unified retail price across the country, allowing consumers to avoid unnecessary entanglements when purchasing.