BMW Mode: German dominated localization

Different from the sales channels of Audi and Mercedes-Benz, BMW's domestic sales model is BMW (China) Automobile Trading Co., Ltd., which manages the sales, branding, and marketing of imported BMW, domestic BMW, and MINI. BMW Brilliance is only responsible for production.

This has a profound historical origin. At the beginning of the establishment of BMW Brilliance in 2003, BMW expanded the sales channels of BMW Brilliance on the basis of its original imported sales network and had been responsible for the sales of BMW Brilliance. At that time, only one flagship store in Shenyang, BMW Brilliance’s first distributor, was established by a joint venture between Brilliance and BMW. Most of the other dealers are from BMW's original network. For example, the mainland importers Debao, Yanbao, etc. have all obtained the agency rights of BMW Brilliance for the first time. It is said that the flagship store jointly established by BMW Brilliance and BMW was later controlled by BMW.

In September 2005, BMW established a wholly-owned subsidiary BMW (China) Automobile Trading Co., Ltd. in Beijing, and Shi Dengke, president of BMW Greater China, served as chairman and president of the company. He is fully responsible for the import of BMW products, including the MINI brand. , sales, marketing, marketing, service and other services. The company and BMW Brilliance Automotive Sales Co., Ltd. have exactly the same functions. It is an important step for BMW to recover BMW Brilliance's sales rights and achieve on-grid sales.

Since then, the integration process of BMW sales channels has gradually accelerated. In 2006, BMW set up a sales region in charge of the East China region in Shanghai. In the same year, BMW set up the South China Region of BMW for Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, and Fujian in the same year. The region was assigned by the German regional manager to take charge of imports. The on-grid sales and market development of BMW and domestic BMW. After the sales area was established, the main job of BMW Brilliance became product production and logistics distribution.

In 2007, Wu Peide took up the position of president and chief executive officer of BMW Brilliance Automotive. After this, four senior vice presidents including sales, production, finance and human resources of BMW Brilliance replaced all. Taking this as an opportunity, BMW Greater China took back the sales rights of BMW Brilliance and incorporated marketing, brand communications, advertising, and channel management. BMW Brilliance's main work was limited to production and became BMW's foundry. "Live or BMW Brilliance, but how do you want to listen to BMW?" At that time, a BMW Brilliance person described the situation after the grid connection is "Bao A La carte, Brilliance BMW to pay the bill."

Since then, the sales and marketing departments of BMW Brilliance BMW are still operating on the surface, but in fact the power of the department has been overpowered by BMW and it has no decision power. At that time, BMW Brilliance sources stated that the authority of some department heads was limited to internal personnel management, and important decisions were reported to BMW. This is mainly because of the national "Automobile Brand Sales Management Measures." The approach requires that the production entities and sales entities of the auto companies must be unified. This means that cars produced by BMW Brilliance can only be sold by BMW Brilliance. In this way, the BMW Group could not fully recover the distribution rights of BMW Brilliance and could only nominally maintain the sales rights of BMW Brilliance. In fact, it controlled it.

This is clearly felt by comparing the official websites of BMW China and BMW Brilliance. BMW China website is rich in content, illustrated, and information is updated in a timely manner; Brilliance BMW's website is lack of old content, less information, a lot of content is the company profile, only a few news updates are also about BMW China news information.

Another feature of the BMW China channel is the localization of the management team. In BMW China and BMW Brilliance's management system, a large part of them are “Post-70s” Chinese, such as MINI Brand Director Zhu Jiang, BMW Brilliance Marketing Director Shao Bin, BMW China Marketing Director Zhu Liwei, and BMW China PR’s former Director Li Yingjun. In August 2010, Singaporean Chinese citizen Xu Zhijun took up the post of president of BMW (China) Automobile Trading Co., Ltd., and Lu Yi served as vice president, which is also an important symbol of BMW's Chinese management team's overall advancement of localization.

This is related to the localization strategy implemented by Stangenko. Stangko came to China in 1980 to study in China. Since assuming the position of President and Chief Executive Officer of Greater China in 2004, Stenco refused to copy BMW's global route and strengthen localization in terms of products, marketing and branding. For example, at the beginning of 2005, he announced that the BMW 3 Series and the BMW 5 Series all reduced their prices by a maximum of 100,000 yuan. In 2006, he led the domestic BMW 5 Series to lengthen 140 millimeters. In 2010, he abandoned the global brand route of BMW, will landscape painting, Chinese elements such as Beijing Opera and China Print have merged with the BMW brand concept to launch the BMW Hyatt series. This is the "unprecedented" initiative of BMW headquarters, but it has finally won recognition in the Chinese market.

Obviously, the channel strategy and localization strategy of “China Connect” Sengke has been a great success, helping BMW China's sales to step closer to Audi. However, as a charismatic leader, Stangenko's above-mentioned measures are closely related to his superior personal ability, rather than based on the institutional decision of BMW headquarters. Shi Dengke is currently 57 years old and worked for BMW China for 7 years. Once it leaves the company in the future, whether or not the current success of BMW China will continue from the system will become a Kaner.