Coach Industry “Going Abroad” to Enhance its Global Presence
2009-06-08 Source：english.chinabuses.com
Summarize：The bus & coach industry, often regarded as a Cinderella, only accounts for a relatively small proportion of China’s auto industry. After the global financial crisis broke out in late 2008, Beij ...
The bus & coach industry, often regarded as a Cinderella, only accounts for a relatively small proportion of China’s auto industry. After the global financial crisis broke out in late 2008, Beijing rolled out a host of measures to boost the domestic consumption of vehicles so as to revitalize the sagging auto industry. In the first five months of 2009, statistics show the government has been fairly successful in pumping new life to the passenger car sector. However, the commercial vehicle, esp. the bus & coach sector, has kept falling due to a lack of effective incentives from the government.
In the past decade, China’s bus & coach industry has made substantial progress. In 2000, the production volume of buses & coaches in China only took up 5% of the world’s total. In 2008, the percentage jumped to a staggering 52%. Apart from the increase in quantity, the quality of the indigenous commercial vehicles has also made strides forward. Along with the maturity of their global supplying chains, buses & coaches made in China are now equipped with state-of-art technologies and boast very appealing looks. Thanks to their inexpensive costs, China’s buses & coaches are highly competitive in the global market. The current domestic bus builders, which have successfully survived the cutthroat competition in the past decades, are now expanding their play ground to the overseas market.
Impressive as its growth is, the industry still has lots of problems yet to be addressed. First, China still has nearly 100 bus builders at present. Yet, technological innovations are far from enough to sustain the sound development of the sector. Second, dozens of enterprises are now involved in exporting their bus & coach products. However, no one has earned a solid fame in the global market. Third, when it comes to quality and post-sale service, China still lags behind those top-class global players.
Still in its fledgling stage, China’s bus & coach industry is now faced with unprecedented challenges and difficulties. Despite a weaker demand for China’s buses & coaches from the overseas market, the industry has never slackened its efforts to explore the international market by building indigenous brands, strengthening marketing and post-sale services, and tightening cost control and corporate management.
The governments of various levels in China have also rolled out a host of measures in a bid to bring the sector in line with the international standards. Thanks to this, buses & coaches are constantly undergoing upgrading and those enterprises involved in this sector have shown increasing enthusiasm in self-innovation.
Some insiders have rightfully pointed out China’s bus & coach builders could hardly make any progress unless they confront the direct challenges from the first-class bus builders around the globe. For example, customers in those developed countries are usually said to be very picky, which is actually very essential for driving China’s enterprises to take new initiatives to better their products and services.
In 2007 and 2008, buses & coaches made in China made a quite noticeable presence in some developed countries, including Germany, Italy, France, Britain, and Australia, etc. Last year alone, China realized an export revenue of RMB 6.74 billion (about USD 986.209 million). Given the competitiveness of China’s products, the global bus & coach market still promises a huge potential for domestic commercial vehicle builders.
As to how to explore the international market, one thing that needs to bear in mind is to build China’s own brands. To achieve this, both enterprises and governments have been working meticulously to promote self innovation, particularly in the key parts & accessories, such as engines and transmissions, which many Chinese enterprises are still subject to overseas suppliers.
In terms of marketing, emphasis has been given to the cultivation of China’s own sales channels and customers. In the meantime, self-supportive sales channels are now being brought into balance with dealership to generate win-win results.
Finally, to attract and retain overseas customers, bus & coach builders in China are now sparing no efforts in constructing their post-market service networks in order to help their customers cut operational costs and increase profit margin.
To further boost the performance-price ratio of China’s buses & coaches, enterprises have always attached paramount importance to driving down costs without compromising the quality of their products.
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