In the just-ended 2013 Tmall Car Festival, Geely Automobile’s online flagship store bettered the car sales record once again. In 18 days, 1087 cars were sold, with 60 units sold on average each day. Geely becomes the biggest winner in this festival. Due to the hot sales, 2925 Geely autos have been sold through its online flagship store by August 13, realizing a year-on-year increase of 200 percent.
Tmall Car Festival is the first large-scale online auto group purchase activity, attracting ten well-known automobile manufacturers and more than 800 4S shops, including GM and MG. Every manufacturer gave an unprecedented margin of preference, creating a car purchase carnival online for consumers, particularly car fans.
In this festival, Geely’s many car models were put on sale, not only the Gleagle Panda, GX2, GC7, New Vision, New Free Ship, GX7 but also the Emgrand, providing consumers with various surprises. Activities like “Car Package” and “Panda sold at Half Price” held by Geely brought tangible benefits for consumers, while besides all this, Tmall gave more benefits that buyers could get RMB 6000 yuan as additional subsidies. So we can say the festival is full of benefits and surprises. In the end, Geely Automobile got the biggest sales by its high cost performance and great preferential policies.
Registered in Tmall on December 6, 2010, Geely Automobile is the first online auto flagship store in China. After nearly three years’ exploration and improvements, its online shopping procedures have become more normative and modes of payment more convenient, providing a platform of better quality for car buyers. Consumers also show greater trust in such an emerging automotive marketing model.
Since its presence in Tmall, Geely’s sales have kept increasing. So far, its online flagship store’s total sales in 2013 have reached 2925 units, doubling last year’s sales or an increase of 200 percent. This is an preliminary success of its online marketing. The page views of Gleagle official flagship store from January to July this year reach 2.77 million and total visitors 1.43 million. Such a hot scene also proves its success in exploring the e-commerce market.
Besides, Geely has developed the “OTO Automotive Electronic Business Model” (OTO is short for “Online To Offline”). By this model, consumers can login in the store to browse and comment cars, and also communicate with sales personnel through online audio or video to learn about detailed purchase procedures, all of which can save consumers the trouble of visiting physical 4S stores. Online shop realizes the combination of online and offline car purchase and keeps improving its service concept by bringing more feasible and better shopping experiences for consumers.
An insider also made comments on this: “Today ‘online shopping’ has penetrated into ordinary people’s lives. Maybe consumers will be more identified with shopping online in the near future. At that time, purchasing car online will be the mainstream.” Geely Automobile has seized market opportunities. Through exploring the operating mode of online shopping, it has made its online flagship store the leader of all online auto sellers.