GAC Toyota Plus Small Size Auto for Young Generation

With crowd dancers aside, Kazuhiro Kobayashi, new general manager of GAC Toyota, took off black suit to red causal polo. It happened at YARIS successor news conference, and hinted stable style GAC Toyota has changed for young generation.

Kazuhiro Kobayashi made an agreement with Chinese part leader Hui Li, vice general manager, that YARiS new Chinese name is “Zhi Xuan” which means “ultimate cool” and starts 6 reformations about product, marketing, service and organization structure.

Hui Li said that “Zhi Xuan” is the symbol of Chinese strategy beginning. GAC Toyota has enter fast extend period. The company will launch 1-2 new models to market every year. GAC Toyota plans to increase sales & production to 500 thousand by 2015, and achieve 40% middle small cars. At present, small size car which aim young people only takes 5% sales.

According to beautiful market performance of upper medium car Camry and SUV Highlander, GAC Toyota announced a good transcript for the first half this year. However, YARiS, the only small size car of GAC Toyota, has not performed as good as its fellows. Since entered Chinese market, its hatchback design and price has not fit customer’s taste ever. YARiS sometimes is taken as shopping tool for female.

Hui Li said original YARiS sales do not satisfactory, and price etc. has distance from customer expectation. We will rethink about it deeply. However, as long as consumer using it, they will have deep impression of its quality, safety and operation etc.

At present, young consumer has kept increasing. They are more sensitive with price. Many auto brands take a stiff competition among A-class auto segment. Industry wonders that how come Toyota, which really cares about its profit ratio, is interesting in small size car.

Kazuhiro Kobayashi does not leak more information about profit, but answered the question by “if a car makes relative high profit, it should be high emission at first. But each auto company has its position, Zhi Xuan aims to make young consumer to fulfill his first car purchase. We hope to build a foundation in case those young consumers replace their vehicles.”

Hui Li said that GAC Toyota has missed some opportunity of small size car segment, which influences customer purchase and replacement. Large emission car looks profitable, but it has no profit if promote too much. However, small size car has value chain to follow, which is also profitable.