Geely Automobile’s Marketing Strategy Analysis

The development of China’s automobile industry started relatively late, which has only more than50years history, but the developmental speed has been fast. Since China became the world’s first biggest country in automobile production and sales in2009,the number of China’s automobile production and sales were both able to reach more than19million by2012, maintaining the number one position for four consecutive years. Starting from the late1980s, China’s automobile industry has focused systematically on the implementation of the "Market Exchanging Technology" policy. But the result was not as anticipated but ended up in surrendering a huge market without a resultant acquisition of technology. China has become the biggest country of automotive assembly, rather than producer. In the1990s some national brands including Geely and Chery began to emerge and have been growing from strength to strength in the midst of fierce competition. Particularly Geely has not only mastered the core technology of manufacturing automobile engines, transmissions and other components, but also has a complete independent intellectual property rights. In2009Geely successfully acquired the world’s second largest automatic transmission company DSI, and acquired the entire equity interest of Volvo Car Corporation of Ford Company by spending1.8billion dollars in2010. It was then successfully inducted into "Fortune500",the world’s top500corporations in2012, becoming the first private independent brand car shortlisted company in China.Under the support and protection of national policy, China’s own brands in the automobile industry have developed rapidly in recent years. But compared to the international automobile giants, in terms of brand image, technology, product quality and marketing strategies, it still faces enormous challenges. In this context, the paper places important significance on the study of Geely Automobile marketing strategy in order to provide references for the future development of China’s own brands and Geely Automobile.In this paper, literature research methods and case studies approach are used. It also employs various analytical tools like PEST, the five forces model to analyze the macro environment of China’s auto industry and the competitive arena of Geely Automobile industry. Based on the theory of the4P marketing mix strategy, Geely’s marketing strategy is further analyzed systematically. On the basis of which recommendations for improvement in the different fields such as:the impact of low-carbon products and brand image, the implementation of differentiated product strategy, adhering to customer-oriented pricing, continual expansion of channels, are made to increase research and development of new energy technologies.