More than a decade ago, American car dealers dismissed the idea of ​​Internet companies and automakers trying to sell cars online; today, Chinese automaker Geely tries to make Chinese consumers buy them as easily as buying clothes online. Car.

This is an online sales shop with no sales tasks. Advertising with prize surveys and test drive experiences occupy the top half of the shop's homepage. However, after opening for one month and four days, the page shows only two transaction records.

This is the flagship store of Geely Automobile Global Hawk Taobao Mall. On April 7, 2011, this shop, which is known as China's first car online shop, went online. They only sell two special products for the network, one is a 1.3L manual block two-color Panda car, and the other is a 1.5L automatic two-color Panda car.

Unlike all other car companies that are known as selling cars online, Gifison first explored the specific details and steps of China's online car purchase and tried to open up a new car marketing channel.

Group buying activities took the lead in the panda car last December 22 in Taobao Mall conducted a group purchase activities. 300 cars were sold out in one minute.

It is not unusual for car dealers and e-commerce sites to join hands, and General Motors has sold cars on eBay.

In mid-August 2009, General Motors and eBay announced the launch of a new online shopping cart campaign for California to take away the history of pre-owned car transactions on eBay.

They built a special website for this purpose. GM’s 225 dealers participated in the state. Buyers can either buy directly at the list price or negotiate with customer service, and finally pick up the car at the dealership store. During the six-week event, the website attracted a total of 1.5 million visits and brought 1,500 purchase intentions to the dealers.

At the end of the event, General Motors and eBay said that they were successful. General Motors said that next year it will consider continuing activities, and eBay said that similar cooperation will be carried out with other car dealers in the future. However, none of them gave specific sales figures.

The dealers who participated in the event bluntly stated that the actual transaction volume brought about by this event was actually quite limited.

Outrageously, their story is no longer there.

Geely obviously does not want to repeat the same mistakes. The background for them to start selling cars online is: China is increasingly used to shopping online after the 1980s and 1990s. In 2010, Taobao's registered users were 370 million, and young people were the backbone. The development of Internet marketing for this consumer group is considered to be a step toward the future development of the automotive industry.

Geely did some temptations before the Taobao Mall flagship store opened. On December 22, 2010, Panda Motors made a group purchase at Taobao Mall. 300 cars were sold out in one minute. Afterwards, they also organized a round of campaigns to vote for the “first person in China’s online car purchase” through the canvassing of sea votes and taking shots of designated products.

These are not only marketing tools but also attract eyeballs and purchase intentions. They are also the process and steps for previewing online car purchases. You know, cars are harder to sell than online sales of books, clothes, and home appliances. Chen Hongsheng, deputy general manager of Geely Auto Sales Co., told the Southern Weekend reporter that the group buying activity is an exploration of the flagship store before its official opening, in order to ensure that there is no problem after the official opening of the flagship store.

Different from the US model If the US approach is to take the flow of people from the Internet into the offline, Geely Automobile's current approach is to take a bigger step - it wants to bring offline people into the Internet.

In 1998, the Silicon Valley startup incubator Idealab was born with an Internet company called CarDirect. The car website led by it was trying to sell cars directly on the Internet, allowing consumers to prepay online and then buying cars from dealers nearby. Transported by truck to the door of the consumer.

This practice was then strongly opposed by US car dealers, who feared they would be completely bypassed by this new service model, and more worried that car manufacturers would sell their cars online or through other internet companies. So they put pressure on government departments.

The Wisconsin government finally ordered CarsDirect. Com stops operating in the state.

The idea of ​​car manufacturers trying to reach the net was also blocked. In November 1999, Texas ordered Ford Motor Company to stop selling used cars in Houston. In 1999, General Motors tried to hand over 10% of its products to the Internet. Because of opposition from distributors, it had to adjust the plan quickly.

After more than a decade of years, the United States has not been forbidden to sell cars on the Internet, but the development is lackluster. Perhaps the biggest change in the decade is the car dealership itself. They take the initiative to embrace the Internet and set up websites to help consumers find relevant models and purchase information. They are practicing how to better handle the purchase intentions from their own, car companies, and third-party websites, and translate them into real-world transactions.

Gaining potential consumers on the Internet is also a new and ongoing change in China’s auto industry. If the U.S.’s above-mentioned approach is to take the flow of people from the Internet into the offline market, Geely’s current approach will be even larger—it wants to bring the offline people into the Internet and cater more fully from the sales channel. Future internet spending habits.

This is tantamount to grabbing online shopping carts just as easily as other online shopping before grabbing competitors. The result may simply be to attract potential consumers offline, but it is not ruled out that this unique selling point can attract the possibility that it might otherwise go. Some potential customers to competitors.

Although China's car dealers are not as strong as their American counterparts, but they can be at ease with certainty is that for a long time, due to the regional characteristics of car purchase, car, and after-sales, Geely and other car companies choose to sell cars online. At the same time, it still can not bypass the dealer.

The greatest difficulty facing the challenge is that consumers’ enthusiasm for online shopping cars is not high. If the benefits are large enough, consumers are still willing to buy, but this measure is not a long-term solution.

Geely’s bigger challenge may come from the consumer level.

For many Chinese families, buying a car usually takes a few months to understand the vehicle's information, solicit the opinions of many relatives and friends, and finally complete the purchase after comparing test drives. At the same time as buying a car, it also involves services such as car registration, insurance purchase, and loan, etc. It requires car owner signature confirmation. These steps cannot be completed online.

In addition, at present, the general online payment provided by major banks in China has a single maximum limit for daily transactions, which is usually no more than 10,000 yuan. Online shopping cars mean that buyers must first go to the bank to apply for the professional version of online banking, raise the limit, and can complete online payment.

It is not difficult to understand why the car dealers who have successively played the slogan "Online Car Selling" have either chosen to book online first, and then went to the dealer to pay for the car, or to build a so-called "Online 4S". Stores, displaying vehicle configurations, word of mouth, and providing dealer information, etc., are at best an additional source of online information. Before the "Global Hawk" flagship store, Geely Automobile's official website has a column named "Online Auto Market". After users select models and regions, the page will point to the corresponding dealer information.

The biggest difficulty right now is that consumers do not seem to be enthusiastic about online shopping cars. Chen Hongsheng admits that young people are accustomed to online shopping, but because of the differences in the experience of commodities and offline products, consumers need time to accept this new shopping model.

At present, online car sales are the most attractive ones, perhaps more benefits than under the line, such as special models designed for online car sales, price concessions, and other gifts.

If these benefits are large enough, consumers are willing to buy it. In September 2010, Mercedes-Benz Smart sold 70 percent of its shares and sold 205 vehicles in 3 hours and 28 minutes. On April 22, the group buying site of the US delegation Tianjin station bought a Geely Panda 1.0L manual standard car at a price of 20%, and sold 4 vehicles in 4 days.

However, this measure is not a long-term solution.

However, regardless of the actual trading volume, for an automobile company, the cost of maintaining an online shop does not seem to require much, and it does not rule out that more companies will follow in the future and accelerate the arrival of the online car purchase era.

For Geely, the greater value of the current "Global Hawk" flagship store may lie in the fact that it has opened nearly 1 million visits a month and has conducted research on netizens' participation in related activities. This will undoubtedly help Geely learn more about consumer habits.

Fortunately, Geely did not have sales requirements for this flagship store. Chen Hongsheng, deputy general manager of Geely Automobile Sales, even said that trying online sales itself is an improvement.