 | Home > Off Topic > JLR in Trouble in China |
 
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| Supacat Member Since: 16 Oct 2012 Location: West Yorkshire Posts: 11018   
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http://www.spyghana.com/land-rover-tries-h...oque-cars/
Doesn't help to firstly blame the Chinese consumers, saying “they drove too fast” & then be caught out having "found the problem long ago and issued confidential notices only to the company’s engineers."  |
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16th Mar 2015 8:59am |
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| Supacat Member Since: 16 Oct 2012 Location: West Yorkshire Posts: 11018
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There's more on the story here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/20/...6320150320 Of interest is the the fact that JLR have been caught out, have apologised for gearbox issues via its microblog, recalled 36,000 vehicles and then found it necessary to extend the warranty period of affected gearboxes to 7 years after the date of purchase from 3 years, or 240,000 km rather than 100,000 km, whichever comes first. Is the latter a first for JLR? All in all quite a contrast to how JLR treats it's customers in more mature markets.  to the Chinese consumer. |
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21st Mar 2015 8:41am |
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| Supacat Member Since: 16 Oct 2012 Location: West Yorkshire Posts: 11018
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It seems that JLR's issues in China are continuing, albeit in a slightly different way - it's inability to sell cars and it's plummeting market share in the last quarter.
I wonder if the lack of revenue from China will impact plans elsewhere and even have a knock on effect on the new Defender timeline? "Mr Akio Toyoda has China on his mind. On the day he announced record earnings, the Toyota Motors president warned of a sharp slowdown in the world’s biggest market, echoing concerns already aired by BMW. But another development in China may spell even more trouble for global automakers: A US$21,700 (S$30,000) Land Rover lookalike manufactured domestically. A sport utility vehicle bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Evoque model went on sale last week at a third of the sticker price of the original, and it is already racking up thousands of pre-orders. Jaguar Land Rover’s Mr Ralf Speth has railed at the rise of China’s “copy-and-paste” auto industry. But complaining is all the chief executive and his peers can do as China continues churning out ever more clones of cars, electronics, appliances and clothes originally designed in other countries. The prevailing opinion in boardrooms from New York to Frankfurt to Tokyo has long been that China, which is minting new millionaires at the fastest rate in history and creating a massive middle class, will be easy prey for established brands with an expertise in hawking goods to higher-income consumers. The richer mainlanders get, multinational companies presumed, the more they will want Burberry in the closet, Rolex on the wrist, and Lexus in the driveway. What CEOs did not anticipate is mainland Chinese consumers’ penchant for labels saying “Made by China” (if not “Made in China”). As analyst Thomas Gatley of GaveKal Dragonomics argues in a new report, multinationals may already be losing Chinese consumers they thought were theirs for the taking. “There are now signs that local Chinese companies are capturing much of the gains from this new stage of consumer spending — a worrying development for multinationals counting on China growth,” said Mr Gatley. The all-important automobile market is emblematic of the trend. Many of China’s nouveau riche aspire to own an SUV, which should be great news for the Toyotas, Daimlers and Fords of the world. But in the early phases of China’s SUV boom, the companies that flourished were foreign manufacturers with local joint ventures. Sales for those companies jumped more than 70 per cent in 2013 alone. Shanghai Volkswagen’s Tiguan, for example, remains the second-best-selling SUV on the mainland. Meanwhile, domestic companies are beginning to catch up. In the first half of this year, sales of Chinese-branded SUVs rose roughly 30 per cent versus 12 per cent for foreign names. From January to June, six of China’s 10 best-selling SUVs were domestic. DOMESTIC BRANDS GAINING MARKET SHARE One can debate why mainland consumers are flocking to names such as Great Wall Motors, JAC Motors, Chang’An Automobile Group and Landwind (maker of the Land Rover lookalike). Value? Familiarity? Nationalist instincts? There is probably no single answer — just as with the many Americans who only buy American-made cars. “What’s even more surprising,” Mr Gatley pointed out, “is that the domestic brands seem to have gained market share without cutting their margins to the bone in a ruinous zero-sum game.” If corporate China has indeed cracked the code of offering the right mix of style, quality and price, multinational executives such as Akio Toyoda are in for a bumpy decade. Are there other sectors at such a tipping point? Recent sales figures from Japan’s Shiseido and Anglo-Dutch Unilever bear out the findings of a July 1 Bain report that “local brands gained share over foreign competitors for the third year in a row.” Last year, local brands gained shares in 18 of the 26 market-access categories Bain studies, growing an average 10 per cent versus 3 per cent by foreign brands that gained ground in only eight categories. CEOs at multinational giants are quite skilled at hyping the China-potential scenario to shareholders: 1.3 billion people who want to live like Americans are getting richer and savvier by the day. But if local Chinese companies repeat the success of domestic SUV makers in other industries, international CEOs will have some serious explaining to do. They will also have to quickly remodel their business strategies. The rapid inroads made in China by domestic smartphone makers such as Xiaomi, for example, suggest danger ahead for international brands. There is a very real risk that the emergence of Chinese consumers will be more of a local story than a global one. Overseas companies that take them for granted do so at their own peril." http://www.todayonline.com/commentary/rich...epage=true |
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10th Aug 2015 8:28am |
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