AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)07/27 Report--

As a young joint venture company in China's automobile industry, GAC Fick officially entered the market in 2010. In recent years, its energy has experienced great ups and downs, with a sharp decline in sales, frequent product criticism and serious dealer problems. Not long ago, because of the departure of Zheng Jie, president of GAC Fick, many people worry about whether the company will fall into a life-and-death crisis.

According to relevant data, GAC Fick sales in June were 5177, down 54 per cent from a year earlier, while cumulative sales in the first half were 35849, down 49 per cent from a year earlier. This is the 17th consecutive month of decline in sales of Guangzhou Auto Fick since January last year, making it the lowest profitable company in GAC GROUP.

In 2016, with Chinese people's pursuit of SUV models, SUV has become the main force in the automobile consumer market, almost every enterprise has stepped up research and development, and Guangzhou Auto Fick is no exception. Sales reached an all-time high in 2016, with 179800 of total sales in 2016 alone, an increase of 260% over the same period last year. In 2017, it broke through the 220000 mark, an increase of 23% over the same period last year. Guangzhou Auto Fick also quickly stepped onto the main stage of the automobile market.

In 2016, Guangzhou Auto Fick opened up territory with its main forces, Liberty Man, Free Light and Compass. Horse herders and imported Grand Cherokee also ushered in resplendence in the cross-country SUV market, and launched a high-end product commander to locate the market in 2018.

However, the downturn in the car market in 2018 dealt a blow to Guangzhou Auto Fick, and the disadvantages of its over-reliance on SUV models were gradually exposed. Sales for the whole year of 2018 were 125100, down 38.99% from the same period last year. SUV model is no longer hot, compass, free light month sales of only 3000 vehicles, even the newly promoted commander, also suffered a sharp decline in sales.

Once the car dark horse, now sales have halved, the change is so fast that people are a little caught off guard, in-depth study of the reasons from the Guangzhou Auto Fick inappropriate strategic analysis.

As the automobile market enters the cold winter of 2018, every car company is considering how to open the consumer market with its products, so when many car companies transform into the new energy market to increase R & D investment, Guangzhou Auto Fick stands still and adheres to the SUV route. The rapid expansion of SUV capacity has become a burden, and after tasting the benefits of SUV in 2016, GAC Fick has broken through 400 dealerships across the country, compared with FAW-Volkswagen, which sells millions of vehicles a year. Excessive extreme expansion model and over-reliance on SUV in the absence of the new energy market, product updates are too slow to keep up with the development trend of the market.

In addition to the absence of the new energy industry, quality problems have also been criticized by Guangzhou Auto Fick. Since 2017, Jeep Free Light and Compass computer main selling vehicles have successively experienced a large area of "oil burning" problems, but Guangzhou Auto Fick's practice of "only changing but not recalling" has been complained by many consumers. At the end of September 2018, Guangzhou Auto Fick launched a 2.4L engine recall under pressure to design 140000 Jeep free light and compass models, equivalent to 70 per cent of Jeep brand sales in China in 2017.

In addition, GAC Fick also has hidden dangers in the personnel structure and authority distribution. According to the division of labor between Chinese and foreign executives, the Chinese side is only responsible for the personnel, finance, procurement and other business of the business support department, while the foreign side is responsible for the core business such as marketing and channel management. This has led to the failure of Chinese executives who know more about Chinese consumers and the Chinese market to play a bigger role.

In this regard, GAC Fick tried to get out of the predicament through a joint approach.

On May 1 this year, GAC GROUP and Fick Group announced a joint venture to adjust the operation mechanism of Guangzhou Auto Fick and Guangzhou Automobile Fick sales Co., Ltd., integrating them into an "integrated joint venture". The new joint venture president Cai Dini, Executive Vice President Zhang Zongsheng and Guangzhou Auto Fick sales Deputy General Manager Guo Baixun will work together to deal with the future development of Guangzhou Auto Fick. From the personnel structure, it is also difficult to see that Guangzhou Auto Fick has made a complete change.

Not only that, Guangzhou Auto Fick currently has two external problems that need to be solved. First of all, we need to find any model to return to the SUV market and improve the brand strength. Although the popularity of SUV has declined and its market competitiveness has reached, objectively speaking, there are still excellent enterprises that have made unboiled water in SUV, and other joint venture brands have not slowed down the pace of launching SUV, such as Hanlanda, Tuang and other brands, and even the process SUV is catching up step by step.

Secondly, the slow transformation of over-reliance on SUV new energy products Brooks no delay. As we all know, walking SUV alone in the domestic market does limit the development path of enterprises, too single products appear powerless in the face of the omni-directional layout of competitors, and China has also begun to usher in a period of new energy development, several parts that can not follow the development of the times will be eliminated by the market over time, which can be said to be fatal for enterprises.

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