Auto e-commerce Double Eleven, do you dare to buy a car online?

Text/Xiaoxiao

It’s the annual shopping carnival again. How advanced are your cats?

I wonder if anyone still remembers the 5-yuan coupon for Lamborghini from previous years, which turned the discount into a joke. This year's e-commerce companies have clearly put a lot of effort into the automobile sector. Compared with the previous subsidy amount, which was based on the manufacturer's guide price, Tmall's sincerity in this subsidy is clearly visible to the naked eye.

Other platforms are no exception. On the JD.com platform, all new Baojun models have a “1 yuan order and win gift” activity from October 21st to November 30th, and during the entire Double 11 During the cycle (11.1-11.11), you can quickly grab the Buick Yuelo with a 5.99% discount, the Yinglang with a 55% discount, the Beijing Hyundai Ensign EV Changxing Edition with a 50% discount, etc.

On Double 11 today, Chery Tiggo and Geely Geometry C have both advertised 50% off sales. The red posters and oversized slogans are indeed very tempting. But many people are still worried - is it really reliable to buy a car through e-commerce?

Discount intensity

As the initiator of the first-generation Double 11, Tmall has already set an example. The tens of billions of car purchase subsidies cover more than 50 brands and more than 100 models, and the subsidies are also very powerful.

Many independent brands, such as Baojun, Haima, Hongqi, etc., have cooperated with Tmall, Suning, and JD.com and set up official flagship stores directly on the platform. During the Double 11 period, you only need to spend a few yuan as a deposit to get a corresponding amount of cash coupons and car purchase gift packages. After successfully placing an order, the brand store you selected when ordering will proactively contact you to remind you to go to the store for a test drive, payment and pick up the car.

Compared with Tmall's subsidies for complete vehicles, JD Auto took a different approach and shifted its focus to the offline auto parts repair store - Jing Auto Club. Therefore, the marketing focus of Double 11 is also placed on its own stores. Beijing car meeting.

But the same trend as the overall car market is that there are huge discounts and the list of "50% off new cars" activities are some new energy vehicles, such as Geely Geometry C for only 82,800 yuan, Baojun E100 is only 24,900 yuan. The discounts for fuel vehicles are relatively small. The subsidy for the new Audi Q3 coupe is 11,000 yuan, and the subsidy for the Buick Envision S is 20,000 yuan.

Advantages of e-commerce

Before the emergence of automobile e-commerce, our process of buying a car was to go to the 4S store to look at the car - bargain with the salesman - order the car and then wait endlessly - pick up the car. . It is impossible for people to visit every store, study the hidden price increases in every link, negotiate the lowest price with every salesperson, and then compare.

But this pain point of 4S stores is precisely the advantage of automobile e-commerce. They reduce costs through channel optimization and link control, and use Internet information integration to make quotations transparent. Compared with 4S The store cleverly names the delivery fees, registration fees, service fees and other miscellaneous items. The most intuitive feeling of consumers is that buying a car is indeed cheaper, the intermediate links are eliminated, and the profits naturally go to the hands of consumers.

And sometimes if this 4S store does not have a car, that 4S store may have a few cars in stock. Consumers have no way to know, but e-commerce can improve the speed of finding a car by integrating resources. Speed ??up the entire car pickup process.

It seems that automobile e-commerce has great advantages, but traditional 4S stores have not been greatly affected in reality. This is determined by the nature of automobiles.

Traditional 4S stores can take care of all issues such as car procedures, logistics, three guarantees, warranty and after-sales services. Based on the idea of ??"a monk can't escape a temple if he can escape", even if there is a problem with the car, the 4S store will not provide any assistance. To solve the problem, you can also find the person directly responsible for coordination in the store, but if it is a car purchased through a pure e-commerce model, you can’t go to the headquarters to pull up a banner, right?

So now automobile e-commerce and offline 4S stores usually adopt a mutually beneficial cooperation model. The e-commerce leads the traffic, and then goes to the 4S store for the traditional car purchase process, which not only obtains e-commerce discounts, but also obtains after-sales guarantee .

Choose your platform carefully

In addition to e-commerce platforms such as Tmall, Suning, and JD.com, there are also many specialized Internet car purchase platforms - Dangeche, Peanut Haoche, 51che, etc. We are also exploring the field of automobile e-commerce. These car purchase platforms have offline direct stores or franchise stores. After placing an order, consumers can go to pick up the car and purchase the car with the help of low down payment and multi-installment financial solutions.

Everyone is worried about the insecurity of e-commerce, and indeed some such things have happened.

A consumer once bought a car on an Internet car buying platform and spent more than 240,000, but did not buy a car. When he made the purchase, the shopping guide told him that he only needed to pay 10% of the car price as a down payment, and he could also make installment payments over four years. "He bought a Mercedes-Benz with a full price of more than 330,000 yuan. After paying a down payment of 33,800 yuan, he paid a monthly payment of 6,346 yuan per month according to the agreement.

But a year later, the final payment was There is no reduction. This is because when the contract was signed, the monthly payment in the previous year was only "rent" and not the purchase price of the car. These traps hidden in the advertising slogans caught people off guard.

There are many cases like this. The main profit method of these platforms is still the financial leasing service using cars as the carrier. They use cars as the carrier to make loan sharks in disguised form, which is far more profitable than the 4S store model.

In general, the car e-commerce model is not mature enough. It is indeed worth trying new things, but you must be cautious and cautious, and don’t be fooled.

This article comes from Automobile. The author of JiaCheJiaHao does not represent the views and positions of Autohome