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Kia reported global sales results in October, selling a total of 248752 vehicles, an increase of 5.5% month-on-month, with cumulative sales of 2.29 million vehicles from January to October 2019. Among them, Dongfeng Yueda Kia achieved retail sales of 24583 units in October, a month-on-month increase of 34%, and has achieved four consecutive months of month-on-month growth.

It is understood that this achievement benefits from the perfect product layout. A number of Kia models have outstanding performance, with Sportage SUV (KX5), Optima (K5) and Forte (K3) becoming the main sales models. In addition, the Seltos SUV, which was first launched in South Korea and India, has become a hot model pursued by young consumers.

Kia, once an indispensable part of the domestic automobile market, is favored by many consumers because of its outstanding advantages such as good appearance, high configuration and high performance price of the same level. However, after the Diaoyu Islands incident in 2012, the share of Japanese cars in the domestic market continued to decline, and German and Korean took this opportunity to quickly occupy the Japanese market. With the THAAD incident in 2015, Korean cars also suffered a crisis. Hyundai and Kia turned from rapid growth to a falling situation.

It was not until April and May this year that Dongfeng Yueda Kia finally ushered in the long-awaited sales growth in June. It rose 27.3 per cent in June from a year earlier, nearly 10 per cent in July and nearly 5 per cent in August. In today's grim auto market trend has formed a great contrast, to achieve reverse growth, it is not easy.

Driven by the new generation of K3, Huanchi, and the new smart run, sales have rebounded, which is also due to Kia's competition for market share by constantly exploring its price. For example, among the real transaction prices of Kia Xin Zhi run in the past year, the lowest transaction price in the country has reached 108100, the highest cash discount for new cars is 15000 yuan, and the maximum discount for new cars is 8.82% off. As a joint venture compact SUV, the price can be said to be quite competitive.

The explosive growth after the listing of the new generation K3 has also become a bright spot in the performance of the Kia market this year. But the rapid growth of the K3 has not made up for the sluggish sales of the previous main model, the KX5, which has been recalled several times since its launch in 2016 due to double clutch transmissions, rear traction arms and rising oil levels.

Since March this year, Asia will launch the medium-term revamped KX5 model in the name of "China Special supply" model, in the hope that the market can "let bygones be bygones". It was not until October that the recall was announced again because of the same problem. Obviously, the performance of the new generation of KX5 can not be completely attributed to the overall downturn in the car market.

In terms of cumulative sales, Asia has only reached 219000 vehicles in China from January to September this year, only 50 per cent of the sales target of 400000 vehicles. Hyundai, which is also a Korean brand, has sold 451000 vehicles from January to September, achieving 50 per cent of this year's target. Geely, whose two brands are not as good as its own, sold 958000 cars in the first three quarters of this year. Obviously, the hot sales of independent brands bear the brunt of the Korean cars with weak brands in the joint venture brands. It is an objective fact that the sales of Korean cars in China can not beat the sales of independent brands.

With the rise of independent brands, the days of Korean, legal and other joint venture cars lying down and winning are gone forever. In the era of stock competition, consumers pay more attention to the attitude, quality and service of car companies, which are inferior and without excellent strength. Word-of-mouth can not afford to deliberate.

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