More conservative Japanese brands or collective crisis in China

Under the compulsion of the public and the general public, Japanese cars that are too conservative in China have gradually suffered.

In the first half of this year, Toyota sold a total of 3.71 million vehicles, lagging behind General Motors in the sales gap of more than 800,000 vehicles, thus losing the crown of the world’s largest car maker. In the first half of the year, General Motors benefited from the growth in demand in the United States and China, with sales rising to 4.536 million units. Toyota fell to GM and Volkswagen and became the third largest in the world. In addition to the impact of the massive earthquake in Japan in March, factors such as the damaged image of recalls, reliance on the upgrading of existing strong products, lack of new products, and bets on North American ignore the Chinese market, etc., or become a collective crisis of Japanese cars.

According to a survey of Japanese brands published by Gasgoo.com with 1,263 participants, the main reason for Toyota’s loss of its global sales championship in the first half of the year was due to the disruption of its parts supply chain in March and the resulting decline in output. , Inventory is out of stock. However, weaker product competitiveness is also an important reason for its sluggish sales. In addition, the negative impact of the large-scale global recalls that broke out at the end of 2009 has not been eliminated, and it has also hindered Toyota's sales growth.

This year, General Motors has enjoyed a good momentum of growth. From January to July, the Chinese market grew by 5.3%, achieving sales of 1.4 million units; the US market 1.47 million units, which achieved a year-on-year increase of up to 15.6%. Last year, Toyota also sold 8.481 million vehicles, ranking more than GM's 20,000 units. However, in the first half of this year, GM sold more than 800,000 vehicles more than Toyota, which is the largest distance between the two in the past six years. It is not easy for Toyota to surpass GM in the short term.

In addition to Toyota, another Japanese company on behalf of Honda also suffered a large-scale global recall. On August 8, Honda announced the recall of 2.49 million vehicles worldwide, including about 760,000 vehicles being recalled in the Chinese market. Although the number of recalls cannot be compared with the Toyota recall mentioned above, for Honda, the 2.5 million vehicles exceeds the company's global sales volume of 70% last year. The 760,000 vehicles in the Chinese market even exceeded the sales of Honda China's 650,000 vehicles last year.

The phenomenon of large-scale recalls by Japanese car companies has triggered discussions on the crisis faced by the industry. The survey results show that “the damage to the brand image and the decline in the status of consumers” is considered to be the biggest crisis faced by Japanese brand car companies, and 29% of the respondents think so.

The enormous pressure from competitors is the second biggest crisis that is second only to brand damage. 28% of participants believe that the European, American and Korean brands continue to erode the market share of Japanese car brands is the Japanese car is facing problems. Facing the strong offensive of Peugeot 508, Volkswagen's new Passat and Kia K5, Japanese cars of the same class are under tremendous pressure.

The decline in the overall sales volume of Japanese cars and the strategic mistakes in the layout of the corporate market are equally difficult to escape. According to 19% of participants, due to the excessive reliance on the North American market and the lack of attention to the Chinese market, Japanese cars have led to slow strategic decisions and have not properly grasped the blowout opportunities in the Chinese market in these two years.

Although 55% of consumers said that they would not choose Japanese brands, 45% said they would choose Japanese brands, indicating that Japanese cars featuring economic and practical features still have a large market space in China.