Gasgoo.com (Shanghai July 8) – In February the first, made-in-China Range Rover Evoque was launched under the selling price of 448,000 CNY, which was quite high compared with other compact luxury SUVs of the similar model. As the first domestically made model, the domestic Evoque received much focus and promotion by Chery and JLR, who determined to raise their sales in China.
Therefore, the manufactures gave clear orders that dealers must sell domestic Evoque or these 4S shops shall only get half of the commission no matter how much other cars they sell. In that case, there are average more than 90 domestic Evoques in one 4S shop, trapping the main cash flow of these4S shops.
However, in 315（March 15）, Chinese Day for crackingdown fake commodities, China Central Television(CCTV)exposed themalfunctionof gearboxin imported Land Rover Evoque, which gave a big blow to the sales of the domestic Evoque even though the two cars are of completely different models. From the latter half of April, the sales of domestic Evoque reduced to zero. Since these domestic Evoques hadtrapped the main cash flow of these 4S shops, the dull sale hinders the basic operation of the shops.
These shops gained no benefits from the automakers for zero sale and they were deeply troubled the large amount of bank loans. In the desperate situation, these 4S shops wanted to dump these domestic Evoques at great sales. They increased the discount from 40,000 CNY for new car to more than 100,000 CNY.
What’s worse, these sudden great discounts triggered the suspect of malfunction of the product rather than the desire to purchase. According to the official statistic of JLR, the sales of the company from January to May were 39,204 units, falling 23% compared with that of the year earlier.
These were seldom customers in these 4S shops, whose basic operation costed a large sum of money, leaving no money to support unnecessary employees. Therefore, in order to reduce the cost to the lowest, these 4S shops storing a lot of domestic Evoques had no other choice but to lay off their employees, which accounted for one third of the whole employees.
