Infiniti is heading for compact SUV segment while maintaining stable distributing channels in China

Gasgoo.com（Shanghai Nov 30）— SUV QX30, the first luxury compact SUV of Infiniti, made its global debut at Guangzhou Auto Show, indicating that Infiniti was plotting its road into compact SUV segment. “Infiniti has begun its production distribution and product expansion globally, which serves as a platform for QX30,” said Roland Krüger, CEO of Infiniti.

From the point of market environment, lowering price has become a trend for luxury brands. Therefore, it is reasonable that Infiniti will follow the trend. But from the point of company development, franchisers of Infiniti, like that of most automakers, are experiencing the stagnancy. Maintaining the stability of distributing channels turns out be more important than sales growth.

In order to head for luxury compact SUV, Infiniti lowers the price of OX30 as trial. In this way, it can not only improve the sales but also offers more choices for domestic models.

“Regarding Infiniti is still in the stage of development, now we want to concentrate on the development of important models, including QX30, whose launch marks our entering the luxury compact segment, and Q60 Coupe, which will shape our brand and bring new core technology. Since China is our most important growth market, we hope to further expand the user group by expanding product line and entering the compact SUV segment,” said Roland.

Providing its global strategic planning, the sales of Infiniti in China are aimed at reaching 100,000 units in 2018, with domestic vehicles accounting for more than half. In order to further improve the total sales and proportion of domestic models, Infiniti will focus on expanding the production of domestic models after lowering price.

In fact, considering the current market, Infiniti develops more new models to not only boost sales but also strengthen confidence of its franchisers. Franchisers have suffered a lot from unsalable inventory in the first eight months this year and just took a breath in the last two months. However, they will fall into predicament again because of the competition among automakers in the next two months.

Statistics show that about 60% of Chinese franchisers of luxury brands suffered losses in the first half of this year, indicating heavy pressure they face. Infiniti has no exception. It emphasizes on that franchisers should all have appropriate inventory management. But franchisers of Infiniti still remain optimistic toward it and have made up their minds to build long-term cooperation relationship with it after the reveal of QX30.

Learning lessons from history, Infiniti now becomes more cautious about maintaining the stability of distributing channels. Before its “transformation” strategy in 2013, franchisers of Infiniti once suffered terribly from the high inventory coefficient which led to their lowering price substantially. So as to avoid the recurrence of vibration, Infiniti has improved the way it evaluates franchisers to better adapt to market shifts. The market share has overtaken the sales of vehicles for Infiniti to decide the performance of franchisers.