Dongfeng LIU Weidong: China Owned Brand Battle onto Middle West China in the Future

China owned brand market share decrease to 38% in the first quarter this year. LIU Weidong of Dongfeng Auto believes that opportunity for China owned brand is onto Middle West China in the future.

China owned automobile brands develop very fast since year 2011, but market share drops quickly as well. It has decreased from 46% years before to 36% this year. It has dropped down behind 40% red line which is expected by government.

Dongfeng Auto, as one of government owned brand of China, believes that it still has chance to success, although China owned brand has been hit heavily.

“Although price of our cars is decrease, average purchase price is increasing. When we visit our towns and villages, we find they were using China owned brands. But now, many of them choose joint venture brands.” LIU Weidong says, consume structure upgrading is the first challenge for China owned brand.

Price of China owned brand normally below 70 thousand CNY. Low price is our best sales strategy against joint venture brands. However, with west area development, consume demand changes over before. However, China owned brands still use price war strategy, which is not working well and causes marker share reduce.

On the other hand, joint venture now move deep down to town level segment. China owned brand faces more competition. Volkswagen, GM and Dongfeng- Nissan have announced to develop 50 thousand CNY products recently. Besides, some cities in China publish their purchase limitation, which makes customer more and more tend to one shot for ever.

LIU Weidong says, China owned brand develops not good enough is another reason. Although China owned brand have moved fast in the past years, but we have to admit that entire competency is not strong enough to against joint ventures.

China owned brands are still able to share benefit from Chinese automobile industry growth. With 5 to 10 years growth of automobile market in China, China owned brands still have chance although their market share decease.

LIU Weidong says that China owned brand still has construction opportunities, particularly in middle and west cities of China. It still has big market over there. Besides, build ability, particularly appearance build, develops rapid, which increase confident over China owned brand in the future.