Electrification, intelligence and interconnection have become the trend of the future car, all of which are inseparable from the reserves of Internet technology. However, it is far from enough to create a car with Internet genes. How to use big data to satisfy the user experience and the interests of upstream and downstream is more critical.
The connection between the automotive industry and the Internet is more reflected in the application of the scene. With the development and popularization of mobile Internet technology, various applications and innovations based on automobile life scenes have emerged, and opportunities in the areas of superimposing Internet advantages and traditional advantages of chains have become prominent. Internet models such as used cars, insurance, car wash, maintenance, accessories, logistics, and travel have emerged. Although there are exitors, there are still various capitals coming in.
Nowadays, the automobile industry policy is frequent, and the window of opportunity for industry norms and independent brands to become bigger and stronger appears again. At the same time, the emergence of foreign innovation impulses such as LeTV supercars and Ali cars, coupled with the determination of the country's supply-side reforms, has brought a new turning point for the Chinese auto industry, not only the coexistence of traditional and new energy vehicles, but also the traditional automobile manufacturing. The competition and integration of business and Internet technology companies is not only the R&D design supply chain of the upstream, middle and lower reaches, but also the intelligent manufacturing process based on Industry 4.0, and the innovation and transformation of the marketing system efficiency.
Traditional automobile marketing formats and models face four major uncertainties
China's auto industry has entered a period of low and medium-speed growth. The automobile dealership channel has also shifted from frenzied development to rational return. From trading to value chain marketing, from simply focusing on automotive products to focusing on customer satisfaction and repurchasing customer business strategies. At the same time, the O2O boom has made the original car marketing model and system face an unprecedented impact. Under this situation, the contradictions hidden by the original formats and models dominated by automobile manufacturers are highlighted, and the relationship between factories and businesses needs to be repositioned. How dealers and consumers turn from a weak relationship of buying and selling to a strong relationship, how channel dealers fully integrate resources, maximize benefits, brand premiums, and achieve sustainable management have become new concerns of the industry.
1. Uncertainty in game relations: sustainable development planning and strategic direction.
Limited by the business model of brand-licensed stores, it is difficult for dealers as independent investors to plan their own business direction in the long run, and only conduct business within the framework of brand specifications and operational requirements. At present, consumer demand has not been fully released, and many new businesses have not yet been launched, so planning for the future of the company has become a top priority for investors.
As a group dealer, sticking to the new car sales profit, blindly relying on the business provided by the OEM has been unable to achieve sustainable development, must be based on the long-term development of the company, planning strategic direction, fill the position as soon as possible, occupy the high point of demand in the regional market. For example, commercial vehicle dealers can reduce inventory pressure by implementing logistics solutions; passenger car dealers can gain insight into customer needs, leverage customer trust in brands, foster community maintenance centers, and develop customized vehicles. Or combine the needs of automotive culture and related businesses to form distinctive commercial real estate.
2. Uncertainty of internal relationships of dealers: human resource development and organizational effectiveness.
The frontline employee turnover rate is over 50%, and the manager turnover rate is over 30%. This is a conclusion of a 2015 joint venture survey of a joint venture that looks like a brand with a high reputation.
Due to historical reasons, 4S stores rely heavily on brand operators in their management, and their operations are relatively extensive, lacking clear job responsibilities and ability evaluations. At the same time, the position setting is not reasonable, which makes the promotion space for excellent employees and managers limited. At the same time, the distribution of 4S stores has increased the management scope. The group dealers face the problem of lack of professional management talents and increased costs, and increase the difficulty of the first-line burden and assessment.
3. Uncertainty in cost control: The profitability is highlighted by short-term, and the profit structure is undergoing a severe transformation.
Analysis of the 2014 annual report reveals that the average net profit of listed dealers is only around 1.3%. If the dealer's sales target is based entirely on the natural growth of the market, once the market declines, the task can only be accomplished through large-scale promotions, even if the profit margin is difficult to guarantee. When a new market segment becomes the "Red Sea", the profitability is not only reflected in the rebates and sales of the manufacturers. Even if some models sell nearly 200,000 vehicles a year, the dealers can only rely on the manufacturers. Year-end subsidies barely make a profit. The dealers who built the store early can still maintain the advantage in maintenance service by means of customer resources and relatively low construction cost. For new storefronts, maintenance technology, professional technicians, customer viscosity, etc. need to be accumulated. Profitability greatly tests the lean management and operational capabilities of the company.
4. Uncertainty in the innovation model: brand premium ability is not strong and innovation is out of control.
Today, brand operators increasingly refer to dealers as “partners†and hope that dealer groups can use regional resources to better expand brand influence and customer service capabilities. This is a positive for the distributor group's ability to expand the brand's sales premium. However, although the dealer group spends a lot of advertising or marketing expenses in the region each year, it rarely evaluates its brand health, so it is difficult to predict its own premium ability and the innovation ability of various value-added services launched by automobile manufacturers. In this way, it is impossible to maximize the regional customer resources and regional influence of the dealer group, and various innovative practices are difficult to form an effective model. Once the brand operator needs to expand the market share of the region, the dealer group can only contribute funds and channels, and the operation of the private label lacks brand influence and the profitability is worrying.
Four major strategies to promote dealer transformation and upgrading
Although there are various uncertainties, fluctuations are not necessarily a bad thing. In the face of the impact of “barbariansâ€, the time has come for the Internet to help transform the industry. As China's economy enters a new normal, distribution companies must shift from large-scale extensive development to lean efficiency, looking for new kinetic energy for development, namely, continuous improvement of efficiency and integration of ecosystems based on systemic competitiveness.
The tasks of de-stocking, de-capacity, de-leveraging, cost reduction, and short-boarding of the five major Chinese economies are also applicable to the automotive industry. High inventory is an important factor that causes price competition, affects customer experience and corporate profitability. Its source is unreasonable target design and high production capacity. High-yield energy is misjudged by auto manufacturers on Chinese auto market, and it can innovate in eliminating excess capacity. Ideas; cost reduction requires enterprises to use new technologies and do things with more lean thinking and methods; complementing shortcomings is to enable enterprises to make up for the lack of format, value chain or competitiveness, and to have sustainable development capabilities.
Transformation is not a change. The author believes that rationality, win-win, return to the essence, and reconstruction of the ecological circle are the key words for the transformation and upgrading of China's automobile circulation industry. The implementation of the following four strategies will be related to the future competitiveness and market position of channel dealers.
1. Cost leadership strategy.
2. Sort out the core resources and clarify the sustainable development strategy based on customer resource management.
The dealer group as a brand agent should be positioned as the operator of the regional 4S store, that is, the retail business with retail as the core, the sales of insurance products, and the maintenance service format with customer service as the core. Sexual repair rate is the core production format, and these three formats constitute the core business model of the dealer group. As the core carrier of the big data era, customer resources are the primary resources for identifying the value of the group and integrating the advantages of the group.
For the dealer group, its development must be based on strategic decisions to maximize customer resources, optimize internal processes, effectively manage sales targets, improve showroom or store management, streamline customer relationships and increase customer satisfaction, thereby improving internal operational efficiency. Achieve continuous growth.
3. Organizational change, forming a performance mechanism for all employees based on value realization capabilities.
Through a survey of more than 1,800 dealers across the country, we found that the general manager's job competency rate is only 57%, the market manager's job competency rate is only 33.9%, and nearly 75% of employees are not satisfied with the company's management capabilities. If the ability of employees in key positions is not improved, the quality of operations will not be continuously improved, and long-term profits will also face difficulties. Each 4S shop has key business processes and business links. Only by identifying them and forming work habits and matching assessments, so that personnel income and responsibilities can be matched to improve operational efficiency and rationalize user costs.
4. Light asset operation, efficient systemization + eco-sphere competitiveness.
Return to the nature of dealer operations, one is cost, and the other is customers. To reduce unnecessary organizational levels, reduce unnecessary positions, avoid process links that do not generate value, and let each position directly serve the process of creating value, light asset operation is the only way.
At present, China's dealer groups and independent 4S shops are decomposing according to the tasks of the brand operators in the way of achieving the target tasks, lacking the accumulation of their own data and scientific calculations. For dealers, there is no tool-guaranteed internal process and capability management, and it is impossible to visualize or control the profitability. Today, with the increasing proportion of domestic repurchasing customers, the use of professional means and information technology to form a multi-brand viscosity between customers and group distributors can achieve customer conversion within the group, improve transaction efficiency and improve customer loyalty.
Mobile Internet Technology Trends in Automotive Marketing Systems
The traditional business of auto dealers is being swallowed up by car e-commerce and post-market players. In order to stand out from the competition, dealers must use new technology to effectively bring their own venues, equipment, technology, customers, personnel, management, etc. The resource reserve is transformed into core competitiveness, forming a shared ecosystem based on customer value.
Although auto manufacturers invest nearly 100 billion yuan in distribution management systems (including DMS, CRM, etc.), there is still a lack of valid data among dealers, brands, and regions. At the same time, the distribution of the first line of work still uses the original form and cards, which is time consuming and laborious.
In the equity investment market share in 2015, enterprise-level services (B2B) accounted for 15.4%, and O2O only accounted for 11.2%. This shows that the enterprise is the true weight of the customer base. More than 30,000 car dealers in China, more than 10,000 second-hand car offline service providers, and nearly 35,000 post-market merchants will be the target of future enterprise-level services.
China's automobile dealership channel has nearly 80 billion yuan of enterprise-level service scale, but it is still in its infancy, mainly in the following four modes: First, the Internet technology team draws on experience in other fields to test water in the automotive enterprise field; second, the automobile Media-born people rely on the characteristics of media advertising to try to replicate the success of the car home; third, the vertical website or BAT's automotive division develops terminal products based on resources; the fourth is the original automotive industry marketing solution company or content provider, etc. Transformation provides enterprises with mobile internet products services.
The author believes that Mode 4 + Mode 3 is easier to succeed because Mode 4 can establish strong relationships with B-end customers. Mode 3 can provide technical and operational resource guarantees to help customers improve efficiency and achieve profitable growth. For example, Autodealer uses SaaS (software operations) services + content solutions to dominate the United States.
Enterprise-level services are mainly divided into core technology drivers (cloud computing, cloud security, etc.), core capability outputs (such as SaaS and online tool services), and closed-loop products (such as office OA, mobile CRM nails, etc.) around enterprise operations. Companies with core technologies and content companies with a deep understanding of the industry will be the next winner.
The owner's life cycle management involves different scenarios, including information consultation, transaction, second-hand car, maintenance, financial and insurance value-added, daily life social, etc. Each scene is a huge market. For example, the information consultation side was born with the car and the car home. The second-hand car has emerged different modes such as excellent letter, car easy to shoot, melon seeds, good car, worry-free, car value network, etc. Etc. The success of the model requires core competencies, not just extensive development on the application side. At the same time, how to integrate new intelligent hardware products, vehicle networking models and big data analysis into the platform to maximize the consumer experience is a hot topic in the future.
In addition, it is important to focus on the high quality of service and lifecycle of the distribution channel. The de-intermediation and decentralization of the mobile Internet will change the marketing format and mode to a certain extent, such as the gradually opening of the spare parts supply chain, and the maintenance of the maintenance industry and the chain maintenance. For dealers, it is better to serve consumers by improving operational efficiency, optimizing personnel and organizational costs, and reducing marketing expenses.
Mobile Internet products help resellers realize value in organizational change, cost optimization, and light asset operations. The first is to enable channel dealers to achieve lean operation, reduce the whole process workload from collection to customer follow-up to order, and minimize management costs; second, reduce unnecessary processes and optimize the number of personnel; Cost, reasonable inventory pricing; Fourth, dealers can enjoy the value of the customer's entire life cycle, especially in a region with different brand stores at the same time carry out multi-business operations, the customer can buy, repurchase, redeem, replace And value-added services such as finance are completed in a closed-loop ecosystem, which not only improves the customer experience, but also increases the profitability; the fifth is to help automakers to customize the demand while mass production; the sixth is to use mobile internet technology to build Distribution Group's risk management and control system.
Under the concept of sharing and ecological circle, the future auto manufacturers will work with dealers and third-party professional platforms to build a scene of consumers choosing cars, buying cars, raising cars, using cars, changing cars, docking various entrances, realizing products and The customer's full lifecycle marketing makes the factory and business partnership more stable, reduces marketing costs, speeds up market response, and improves decision-making efficiency.
Shenzhen Niimoo Innovative Technology Co., Ltd , https://www.niimootech.com