Car online shopping: is a gimmick or a trend

Today, through the Internet, people can buy almost any consumer product. From Taobao’s “volume” commodity phone cards and game cards to home appliances at Jingdong Mall, online shopping has long been part of many people’s lives. However, buying cars online is still a new thing for domestic consumers. With the recent involvement of several car companies in online shopping, automobiles and networks, these two things that carry modern life concepts have come together. Automobile online shopping is a new world in the auto market, or is it just a gimmick?

News Background In September this year, Mercedes-Benz (China) cooperated with Taobao.com to launch an online shopping "Buy 999 yuan deposit to buy Mercedes-Benz" campaign.

On September 9th, 205 Mercedes-Benz Smart made a successful purchase and created the highest unit price and fastest transaction record in the group buying website. In the entire trading activity, the first one was sold in 24 seconds, and 55 were sold in 6 minutes. The hour was sold 116 vehicles, two hours 143 ... 3 hours and 28 minutes, the last Mercedes-Benz car was taken away by the buyer, the activities scheduled to last 21 days ahead of schedule.

The crowded car companies have tried to buy water online. Not long ago, in the group purchase activity on Taobao.com, 205 Mercedes-Benz vehicles with a value of more than 100,000 yuan were successfully purchased and created a record of car group purchase. The original hard-top style version with a price of 176,000 yuan can be bought at a price of 7.7 yuan and 135,000 yuan, which is a full 41,000 yuan cheaper. The group purchase took 3 hours and 28 minutes, and 205 Mercedes-Benz smart cars were sold out by netizens. The organizers originally planned to continue for 21 days.

Coincidentally, Lifan Motors also recently launched a "1 dollar spike car" campaign in conjunction with Taobao. The event launched six cars. Dongfeng Nissan and Tencent.com patted and cooperated to launch a 3 yuan spike network buying activity, and sold 3 new Converses at an incredible price of 3 yuan [Review Photo Forum]. Geely also announced cooperation with Alibaba.com to test the e-commerce marketing model of the auto industry. The online shop is expected to open next year. It is reported that Geely will create some exclusive stores for the car version, such as special edition Panda [review picture forum].

In fact, car companies try to buy water online far more than this, according to incomplete statistics, there are currently more than 10 brands such as FAW Mazda, Roewe, BYD, Realtek, and Emgrand set up on the Internet or open online 4S stores through third-party platforms. Consumers can learn more about the models in the online 4S shop. In addition, even some automobile trading market centers have realized the charm of online marketing and started to cooperate with professional car websites to launch online car supermarkets.

Automotive online shopping prospects are bright and winding. There are so many car companies trying to get involved in online shopping. This shows that online shopping has certain advantages for car marketing. It is more obvious that the cost of selling cars on the Internet is much lower than that of 4S stores that need a lot of money to maintain; and the timeliness of selling cars on the Internet is strong, and the latest product information can be displayed to customers in real time; in addition, the way in which information is expressed It is also rich.

It can be said that car online shopping has many advantages that traditional marketing models do not have, so it is worth looking at in the future. However, it is undeniable that, at present, there are many flaws in online shopping.

First and foremost is the problem of customer trust. As we all know, as an extremely complex industrial product, automobiles are more complex than other daily products in terms of use or maintenance. In particular, the use of automobiles also involves the most critical safety issues. In this case, consumers must be more cautious about buying cars. The online shopping car is difficult to make consumers face-to-face observation of goods, test drive is impossible to talk about. In this way, just buying orders online, I am afraid that consumer psychology will have doubts. If you want to dispel doubts, you can only go to the 4S shop to experience the field, but this way, placing orders online is much more effective.

In fact, the concept of “on-line car sales” by most auto makers is not really a car purchase through the Internet. This concept is just a booking or booking service, not a real deal. For example, some car companies set up an online car purchase platform to provide consumers with services such as making an appointment for a car, making an appointment for a test drive, consulting a dealer, and online customer service. However, product experience, car purchase, and after-sales service are still available at the dealer’s store where the user is located. Enjoy, the network can not achieve real transactions. Under such circumstances, online shopping that relies heavily on traditional marketing resources will certainly encounter obstacles in its development.

However, car online shopping as a new type of thing, constantly groping and improving from the process, is the immediate priority. If we can find a way to break the development bottleneck through technology or other means, then its prospects are still worth the wait.