Problems faced by the new management of SAIC-GM

The reorganization of brands and products is the work that SAIC-GM needs to continue to promote in the next few years.

Wen Peng Suping

In a blink of an eye, 2020 is coming to an end, and car companies are about to hand over their final transcripts.

For most car companies, 2020 is not easy. Affected by factors such as the overall decline of the market and the emergence of new consumption trends, the domestic auto market is brewing a drastic change, and many auto companies have begun to reposition themselves.

"It is expected that the year-on-year growth of the market will return to 7%-8% next year, and our plan is to outperform the market." 165438+ 10/9. On the eve of Guangzhou Auto Show, Wang Yongqing, general manager of SAIC General Motors, told think tank Jun, "Although we have encountered various difficulties this year, our goal is to outperform domestic sales."

SAIC-GM is the top three auto companies in domestic sales scale, and it is also one of the most important sources of sales and profits for SAIC. But overall, SAIC-GM's market performance this year is not satisfactory. Affected by the epidemic at the beginning of the year, although the sales volume of SAIC-GM gradually picked up in the second half of the year, the cumulative sales volume of 1- 107600 was107, down18% year-on-year-which was higher than that of 10% in the passenger car market in a narrow sense.

The scale advantage of SAIC-GM is still there, but the development in recent years is difficult to meet the expectations of previous management. As early as 20 15, SAIC-GM released its 2020 strategy in a high profile. At that time, the company's goal was to achieve an annual sales volume of 2.7-3 million, and its share in the China automobile market reached 10%.

Now, SAIC-GM at that time not only overestimated the capacity of China automobile market in 2020, but also underestimated the intensity of market competition.

In the past two years, China's automobile sales have unexpectedly dropped continuously. This year, affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, it is expected to shrink further. According to roland berger, an internationally renowned management consulting company, in 2020, the automobile sales in China will show a negative growth of 8%- 10%, with an overall scale of about 23 million vehicles.

In the process of market scale decline, the performance of major car companies is gradually divided, especially under the new trend of electrification, the challenges faced by traditional car companies represented by SAIC-GM are more obvious. Some commentators pointed out that it is no problem for SAIC-GM to maintain the top three total sales this year, but how to face this rapidly changing market as before after the twists and turns is its next big problem that needs to be answered urgently.

Before answering this big question, SAIC-GM first carried out a round of high-level transfer. At the media communication meeting on June 5438+09, except for other senior executives of SAIC-GM, Jiang Jiong, the former general manager of Wuhan branch of SAIC-GM, took over as the deputy general manager of SAIC-GM, Niu Feng and Zhou Peng were the brand marketing ministers of Buick and Chevrolet respectively, while Gu, who was in charge of Buick brand before, was transferred to Cadillac as the marketing minister.

Under the brand-new personnel layout, SAIC-GM will launch a series of adjustments to the three major brands.

The gap between the three brands is obvious.

SAIC-GM has three brands: Buick, Chevrolet and Cadillac. The first two brands are positioned in the public, while the latter is positioned in luxury. The isomorphism of * * has become the sales cornerstone of SAIC-GM. However, the performance gap between these three brands is obvious this year, and the poor sales of Chevrolet greatly dragged down the overall performance of SAIC-GM.

During the period of 1- 10 this year, among the three brands of SAIC-GM, only Cadillac with the smallest sales volume achieved positive growth year-on-year. The data shows that Cadillac sold178,000 vehicles in the first ten months, up 17% year-on-year, Buick sold 687,000 vehicles, down 5% year-on-year, and Chevrolet sold 242,000 vehicles, down 44% year-on-year.

The automobile market is known as "Golden September and Silver 10". In June this year, the previous backlog of market demand was released, and many automobile companies and brands made breakthroughs. The monthly sales of Buick and Cadillac increased by 27% and 865,438+0% respectively, both hitting new monthly sales, but the sales of Chevrolet 65,438+00 still fell by 29% in June, making it difficult to recover.

Chevrolet entered the China market 15 years ago, but this very popular brand in the United States has not performed well in the China market in recent years. The data shows that in the past two years, Chevrolet sold nearly 2 million vehicles in the US market, compared with 4,654,338+0.35 million vehicles in China last year, and now its sales share in SAIC-GM has also dropped to 20%, only one third of that of Buick.

The overlapping market positioning of Chevrolet and Buick is considered to be one of the reasons for the loss of sales of the former. People who have been observing the automobile market for a long time point out that SAIC-GM holds three major brands, and each brand can go hand in hand in the incremental market and rapidly expand the market scale, but it faces the risk of internal competition in the stock market.

Unreasonable product layout is one of the problems widely criticized by GM brand in China market. Competition often occurs between different brands, even within the same brand. This is particularly evident between Buick and Chevrolet.

The reorganization of brands and products is the work that SAIC-GM needs to continue to promote in the next few years. "The key question is how to distinguish." Wang Yongqing also said frankly, "The differentiation of people, positioning and products must be done well."

In fact, SAIC-GM has obviously realized this problem. In recent years, the marketing leaders of the three major brands will attend the annual media communication meeting, trying to deepen the impression of the different positioning of each brand. Take Chevrolet and Buick for example. According to Wang Yongqing's summary, the target group of the former is "the social backbone who works hard and lives happily", while the target group of the latter is "the innovative and enterprising social backbone".

After clarifying the brand positioning, Chevrolet still needs to "prescribe the right medicine". Unlike the United States, Chevrolet's brand tonality in China market is low, and it is gradually marginalized in the wave of consumption upgrading. Obviously, in the future, we need to adjust the product structure to strive for brand promotion.

Zhou Peng, the new marketing director of Chevrolet, said that Chevrolet attaches great importance to the consumption upgrading trend of China automobile market and has started corresponding market research to prepare for the next stage of product planning. He also introduced several North American heavyweight models such as the eighth generation Chevrolet Corvette hardtop convertible exhibited by the brand during China International Import Expo (CIIE), which received very good response, suggesting that these models will also provide reference for the next generation product design.

New energy vehicles have a strong momentum

Keeping pace with all brands is the guarantee for SAIC-GM to maintain the top three sales, but in the medium and long term, with the changes of the industry, SAIC-GM also needs to lay out in new areas.

With the development of the automobile industry in the direction of electrification and intelligence, the focus of the market is gradually attracted by popular concepts such as electric vehicles, car networking and intelligent driving. In this wave, new car-making forces and independent car companies are ahead. Comparatively speaking, the large joint venture car companies represented by SAIC-GM are one step behind.

In the past two years, SAIC-GM and its parent company GM have announced electrification plans more than once. However, their new platform for building pure electric vehicles has not yet been put into mass production. The late new generation of vehicles has made GM miss opportunities again and again in the competition with new forces such as Tesla, and even made it difficult for the outside world to associate its brand with new energy vehicles.

Wang Yongqing said frankly in this exchange that, indeed, for a traditional automobile enterprise like SAIC-GM, the traditional powertrain is the first thing consumers think of, so its popularity in the new energy automobile market is far from enough. However, the company has taken some actions in this regard.

On the one hand, SAIC-GM has launched four or five new energy products this year and achieved good feedback in the market; On the other hand, starting from next year, with the launch of Cadillac's first pure electric vehicle, SAIC-GM will launch a new generation of high-end electric vehicles in the next few years.

Wang Yongqing introduced that according to the plan, from 2020 to 2025, SAIC-GM will launch nine new energy vehicles covering three brands to meet the needs of different market segments. "In terms of technical reserves, GM is a pioneer in the technical development of new energy vehicles, and we are accelerating the promotion of new energy products." He said.

In Wang Yongqing's view, although joint venture car companies entered the field of new energy vehicles late and belong to the "third echelon", they still have their own unique advantages in product strength and configuration. The pure electric vehicle developed on the brand-new platform will present a completely different look and feel, and with more intelligent technology, I believe it can have certain competitiveness.

"For example, the enhanced version of the super? Cruise, you can automatically change lanes on the expressway. From 2023 to 2024, intelligent technologies suitable for more scenarios will also be deployed on third-generation electric vehicles, including more advanced automatic car-following, automatic parking technology and intelligent driving. "

It should be pointed out that pure electric is not the only direction of SAIC-GM's future layout. Under the trend of automobile emission reduction, SAIC-GM will also develop energy-saving technologies for internal combustion engines and promote their application in products. It is reported that SAIC-GM will have a large number of models equipped with 48V light hybrid technology next year.

This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.