Shopping center, the next battlefield for selling cars? Automobile production and sales

Among the top 100 shopping malls in China, there are 12 shopping malls in Beijing. In seven of them, you can find shops selling cars, while in Shanghai, the number is 10/2 1.

Being able to own a Tesla or Weilai experience store seems to have become a business card for high-end shopping centers.

In fact, cars and shopping centers have a long history. In almost all the popular shopping malls in Beijing, you can often see all kinds of car brands in the atrium on weekends, from luxury brands to independent brands.

However, until Tesla moved the experience center to the shopping mall, watching cars in the shopping mall was still "watching the excitement", and there were not many real cars. The purpose of 4S stores to write off the manufacturer's expenses even goes far beyond the automobile sales itself.

The emergence of Tesla not only changed the rules of the game, but also made many new forces and new energy brands of traditional car companies start to use shopping centers instead of traditional 4S stores as the first choice for offline stores.

The shopping center has become a "new battlefield" for selling cars.

Last year, Li Xiang, the founder and CEO of Li, talked about the reasons for changing the offline store opening plan from 20 to 60 in an interview. He said: "In the case of high customer satisfaction after the delivery of the new car, 20 stores mean giving the opportunity of' enclosure' to competitors. Because we found that if there is no physical store in a city, the market share will be 8 times different, and the existence of physical stores can greatly increase car sales. "

Li Xiang's statement actually represents the mentality of most new power brands.

Under the background that there is no traditional dealer network channel and brand awareness starts from scratch, establishing stores in the most crowded city core business district, adjacent to the first-line brands, can not only bring the greatest exposure to the brand, but also shorten the distance and communication frequency with customers and promote the acquisition of more resources.

Just like NIO House and NIO Space, Weilai's offline stores, they don't bear the KPI of sales figures, but the experiential link of testing the test drive takes the role of drainage.

The direct selling mode of new power brand also provides the possibility for shopping centers to open stores.

There is no after-sales module of traditional 4S stores, so there is no need to hoard a large number of commercial vehicles for order production, and even the digital online car booking system can be completed without going to the store, which makes the lightweight shopping mall experience store give full play to its advantages.

We counted the number of stores of Tesla, Weilai, Ideality and Tucki in Chinese mainland. According to official website, 94 of Tesla's 65,438+067 stores are experience stores, all of which are located in popular business districts in the city. Nearly 90% of the 223 Weilai Centers and Weilai Spaces are located in the core business district. Among Li's 93 retail stores, only Zhengzhou exhibition hall is located in the distribution center, and others are located in the shopping center. In Xpeng Motors, the proportion of sales service centers similar to the "4S shop" model is higher, but the proportion of experience centers located in the business district has reached 75%.

Traditional brands seem to conform to this trend on the road of transformation. For example, almost all the experience centers of SAIC R are opened in shopping malls, and brands such as GAC Ai 'an and BYD have also established many Shangchao experience stores.

After the listing of the first MEB platform pure electric vehicle ID.4X, SAIC Volkswagen also settled in Hangzhou Xixi Yintai City and Chengdu Taikooli, and established the digital city exhibition hall ID. Store X plans to establish more than 40 city exhibition halls in 29 cities in the next year and a half.

Traditional car companies also take the shopping center experience store as a new attempt.

The upsurge of opening stores in shopping malls has also made urban high-quality shopping centers a scarce resource.

There are at least 83 shopping centers in China, and at least two of the four brands are Tesla, Weilai, Ideality and Tucki. You can even find four new stores at the same time in Shanghai Nanxiang Impression City, Dalian Centennial Shopping Center and Hangzhou West Li Yintai. This does not include the experience centers of traditional car companies such as SAIC R, Mercedes EQ and Polestar, which are often located in the core business district.

How fierce is the competition? Some media once wrote in the report that an electric car brand even searched for more than 100 possible locations in Beijing's major business districts in order to open an ideal store in Beijing, but so far there is no conclusion. The core business districts of some second-and third-tier cities have long been crowded with experience stores of various new brands.

Who is the future, the shopping mall or the car park?

If you don't open an experience store in a shopping mall, it doesn't seem to be a qualified brand of new energy vehicles, but is the shopping mall really the future?

According to public information on the Internet, the average monthly rent of a Weilai center in Shanghai is as high as 6.5438+0.38 million yuan, and the annual rent of a flagship store with an area of 3,000 square meters in Beijing Oriental Plaza is also tens of millions.

Compared with the high cost of traditional 4S stores, it is not a money-saving thing to build a quality experience store in the core business district.

No wonder Musk had planned to close all offline stores. Although it was not implemented in the end, some inefficient stores still could not escape the result of closing stores. In fact, in many core business districts, it is not uncommon for new power brand experience stores to change.

From site selection to design, the construction cost of NIO House has been pushed up.

Similarly, the new forces have not given up the battlefield of the traditional automobile park.

Most of the more functional "centers" in Tesla Outlets are located in the traditional locations of 4S stores, and some second-and third-tier cities only have "centers" without "experience stores". A part of Weilai Space has no business circle, but a traditional automobile 4S shop gathering area, and many sales and service centers similar to the 4S shop model have been established in Tucki.

Interestingly, Tesla and Weilai's stores in the 4S store park are often close to luxury brands such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Jaguar Land Rover. Some sales and service centers in Tucki used to be traditional brands of 4S stores. Obviously, attracting traditional brand car buyers is also what the new forces hope.

In fact, the exploration of shopping centers by automobile brands is nothing new. As early as 20 13, Audi opened the "Audi Digital City Exhibition Hall" at the location of Weilai Center in Beijing Oriental Plaza. When BMW promoted Zino electric vehicles, it also set up an exhibition hall in Sanlitun. More famous, this is Mercedes me driven by Mercedes-Benz, which caused a lot of discussion when it stopped operating in June last year.

Mercedes me has successfully shaped the brand image of Mercedes-Benz trend.

Passing on the brand image, shaping the brand value, breaking the circle across borders and helping the brand to establish a wider influence are still the most important reasons why car companies choose to open stores in shopping centers. However, no matter how widely the experience stores in shopping centers are distributed, they also need a strong distribution and after-sales network as a supplement. The appeal of the brand itself can also make interested users willing to give up convenient shopping malls and choose parking lots with relatively inconvenient transportation.

And a high-quality shopping center is actually a scarce resource. After all, not all brands can have a strong voice and bargaining power over the property like Tesla and Weilai, and some high-quality shopping centers also have strict requirements for brands.

But in any case, this trend initiated by Tesla has also enabled auto companies to see the great potential and opportunities of shopping centers, providing the possibility of short-term rapid exposure for new brands, and also providing new ideas for traditional auto companies to operate experience centers. The change from selling cars themselves to selling services and selling experiences is also the marketing direction of cars after they enter the era of electrification.

Write it at the end

Downstairs of Sanlitun Tongying Center, the position of Mercedes-Benz me has been surrounded, and it is rumored that Hengchi Automobile will take over the offer in full.

Perhaps in the future, the new force will still be a high-quality customer of Shang Chao property, but we should also understand that it is not the location of the store that really sells cars, but the products, services and experiences themselves.

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