In recent years, the steady and fast growth of the national economy and the continue improvement of the people's living standard make auto market the important market of mass consumption gradually, and also provide solid market conditions and driving forces for the development of automobile industry. While making great strides forward because of benefiting from the dual effect of the industry development and the market demand, China automobile circulation industry as the connector of the development and the consumption of the automobile industry plays a positive role in promoting the growth of the automobile industry and the rise of the market demand.
With the increment of residents'income and the continuous declining of automobile price, automobile is no longer the symbol of identity and status and its functionality as a means of transport gradually returns. Automobile consumption is being popular gradually and becomes the hot spot of consumption among common people. While, with the progress of China's urbanization process, the proportion of passenger cars gradually increases and its contribution to the growth of the automobile sales is growing.
Although influenced by the international financial crisis in 2009, China's macro economy still maintained a good momentum of development and GDP per capita has been more than US$ 3600. According to international practice, if GDP per capita is over US$ 3000, car consumption will enter a period of high growth. This means that China automobile market is still the market with great growth potential in the future period.
Meanwhile, various encouragement policies, having played an important role in promoting the growth of automobile consumption in 2009, has been adjusted and continued in 2010, in addition, some new policy measures are issued unceasingly. It is believed that stable development will still dominate China's automobile market in 2010. There are many signs to show that the development environment of China's automobile circulation industry is better and better.
Automotive enterprises actively tap secondary & tertiary markets
The rapid growth of China automobile market in 2009 is not a normalcy. In 2009, the reasons of promoting the rapid growth of China automobile market were complex. From the fundamental point of view, the reasons lie in the huge rigid demand of auto purchasing and the secondary & tertiary markets with unlimited potential as well as the favorable driving effect of policies. However, this kind of rapid growth does not happen frequently. The auto sales data of the first six months of 2010 also shows that the automobile market is returning into steady growth.
With the growth focus of automobile market transferring to the secondary & tertiary markets, many auto enterprises have emphasized their channel development to the secondary & tertiary markets. In order to grab greater automobile market share, those joint ventures that have been busy exploring Chinese auto market start to expand their channels and networks and pay more attention to the secondary & tertiary markets. The brands with Dongfeng Yueda Kia, Toyota, Chevrolet and Honda as representatives also embark on the rapid expanding while the self-owned brands greatly extend their marketing networks. The dealership amount of BYD will be over 1000 this year, and other self-owned brands including Changan Automobile Group, Geely and JAC begin to try to set up auto supermarkets in the secondary & tertiary markets.
Automobile circulation channel relies mainly on new car marketing channel
Presently, China's automobile circulation channel can be divided into new car and second-hand car marketing channels, and the former is the main one.
After years of development, China's car marketing channel has formed a certain scale. In 2009, the single-store annual sales volume of the authorized dealers in narrow sense passenger car brands was an average of 619, among of which Beijing had the highest average sales capacity of single-store, followed by Tianjin and Sichuan.
According to the statistics of China Automobile Dealers Association, there are 37,711 automobile brand sales enterprises in China, including 13,531 primary sales networks of the authorized dealers of narrow sense passenger car manufacturers, most of which distribute in the eastern coastal areas??with the characteristic of "crowd in the east and lack in the west" as a whole. In addition, the result of "2009 dealer satisfaction investigation" conducted by China Automobile Dealers Association together with Sinotrust International Information & Consulting (Beijing) Co., Ltd. shows that the operating statuses of auto dealers are good generally. It also shows that currently about 46.4 percent of 4S shops of passenger car authorization brands are under dealer groups and the remaining 53.6 percent are the mode of independent single-store dealer.
Besides, the mode of 4S shop is not ever the main form of new car marketing channel expanding, there are new development trends. The improvement in terms of service is paid more attention by each manufacturer, who transfers more unalterable indexes of establishing 4S shop to soft indexes, such as the unity of service standard, concept and process. Seen from the form, primary and secondary networks are derived from 4S shops, or in the form of combining quick repair services and marketing. China Automobile Dealers Association considered that single dealership and quick repair services that rely on large vehicle-intensive community would develop rapidly.
Meanwhile, with intensifying competition of automobile market, big dealer groups with stronger ability to resist risks are appearing increasingly, for instance, Power Group, Shanghai Yongda, Zhejiang Yuantong and a large number of other automobile dealer groups that start to form scale and become a force which can not be ignored in automobile distribution field. The survey data from Sinotrust shows that big dealer groups who account for 46 percent of all dealers in China contributed 47 percent of the total sales volume in China.
Compared with new car marketing channels, second-hand car marketing channels have a shorter development time, only about more than 20 years from 1980s to now. "Used car trading market" is still the main trading place of second-hand car in China, while second-hand car dealer (later evolved to be brokerage firm) is the business entity, and this kind of operating status continues to this day.
The operation mode of hypermarket in the second-hand car trading market is more in line with the consumption custom of common people, which has begun to take shape after several years'cultivation and development. Presently, there have been more than 600 second-hand car trading markets in various places with a certain scale and relatively complete functions. In recent years, various business modes successively appearing in the market include second-hand car brokerage firm and auction as well as replacement business. The new trading modes provide a new engine to the development of the second-hand car market.
