Research On The Segmentation Of Chinese Car Market

In the last few years, China car market has developed with more obvious buyer market characteristics which mean homogeneous products, drastic price war. So it is necessary to segment the market if a car brand wants to stand out from so many homogeneous competitors.Chinese Car Products and MarketThere are two ways to classify car products. One way is to classify car to A-class cars, B-class cars and C-class cars according to displacement, the other way is to classify car to two-carriage cars and three-carriage cars according to car structure.Cars are large enduring consumptive products or luxurious products, so car marketing has three differences from other common consumptive products. Firstly, price is the most active factor in car marketing. Secondly, brand is becoming more important in car marketing. Thirdly, car marketing show much importance to service.There are three kinds of car markets. They are government buying market, business buying market and consumer market. Government buying market and business buying market is majority in China. But customer market has developed faster than the other two these years.Chinese car market has changed a lot. The government has strengthened macro-control . Foreign company are dominant while Chinese company has also made great strides, we can find much more buyers, more brands and car types. At the same time, companies try their best to abstract consumers .That leads to price dropping, sale channel's integration and diverse promotion.Necessity and Ways to Classify Chinese Car Market Market segmentation is to segment the market into two or more consumer groups with homogeneous demand according to the difference of their buying behavior. Today's market form, amount of brands and colorful consumer demand all prompt us to segment the car market.We can segment the market according to car's own characteristics and consumers' characteristics ? Car's own characteristics include displacement and structure. Consumers' characteristics often include factors such as population, economy, geography and mentality? We always use the factor of displacement, but today's car market is'quite different from that of 1980's or 1990's mainly because of the spring-up of two-carriage cars and private cars ? So car marketing should adapted to this change. In this dissertation, I will segment the car market according to displacement .structure and consumer's gender0Segmentation of Chinese Car MarketBy the first way, we can segment car market to A-class car market, B-class car market and C-class market.A-class car market (displacements .6L). This market faces common consumers with limited income. This kind of consumers is more practical and sensitive to price. So the marketing should be performed around raising proportion of utility to price and raising service quality.B-class car market(1.6L< displacement<=2L).This market faces consumers between age 25 to 45 with advanced education. These people have higher income. They are either private company owners or high-class white collars. These consumers do not just care about utility and price. They wantto buy a car to meet their living and business life. B-class car must be properly positioned and their price should be kept steady.C-class market (displacement>2L) :This market is mainly government buying market and business buying market. In consumer market, most of the buyer are private-company entrepreneur or advanced manager with 30,000 $ income every month. They are at age more than 35 and are mature ' and sober o Brand is most important for them so the car company should look for a long run to accumulate brand value. Dropping price can only be a short -term means to promotion 0 When it comes to service, we should provide some special service to these consumer to make them different from others.By the second way, we can segment car market to three-carriage car market and two-carriage car market.The demand characteristics and marketing tactics of three-carriage cars resemble B-class cars and C-class cars. In two-carriage market, private buyers are absolutely majority. One kind of these consumers is salary stratum and individual sellers and they intend to buy two-carriage car of Chinese brands. The other kind of consumers is vogue white collars and they intend to buy two-carriage cars of foreign brands. Two-carriage consumer is comparatively rational and commonly cares about car's price and utility. Because most of Chinese consumer like three-carriage car, so the consumers of two-carriage should be properly distinguished.By the third way, we can segment car market to male car market and female car market.Men are often buy cars for sociable needs. They want the car should has sturdy driving force, excellent acceleration ability and deep color. Female buyers are generally youth and middle aged white collars. They pursue the vogue and...