China self-owned brands more well regarded by consumers than ever

A one-week survey conducted before the March 15 (the World Consumer Rights Day) showed that nearly half of the participants think that China's self-owned auto brands have achieved greater improvements in quality. Meanwhile, the German and the Japanese auto brands still enjoy well-regarded reputations among consumers.

The quality gap between China's self-owned brands and multinational auto brands has been narrowed for 7 consecutive years with the PP100 (problems experienced per 100 vehicles) shrunk to 13 points from 396 points in 2000, according to the 2017 initial quality study (IQS) released by J.D. Power, an American-based global marketing information services company.

The quality enhancement can be reflected by the sales performance during the same period. According to the data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), the sales of China's self-owned passenger vehicle (PV) brands reached 10,847,000 units in 2017 with a year-on-year growth of 3%, exceeding 10,000,000 units of annual sales for two consecutive years. This sales performance also accounted for 43.9% of the total PV annual sales in China, increasing 0.7% year on year.

As to the consumers' evaluation of the six mainstream auto brands, the China's self-owned brands won 11% of votes, ranking fourth on the list. The top 3 origins are German brands, U.S. brands and Japanese brands. Thus, the self-owned brands still get a quite long distance to catch up with the three multinational auto brands.

According to the survey, 54% of participants devoted their votes to the German brands for the trusted technical quality and security guarantees. The U.S. auto brands ranked second with 16% of votes by virtue of the modern design and innovative technologies. The second runner-up is the Japanese brands that received 13% of votes by right of the comfortable experience and convenient operation.

Additionally, this survey also enumerated some big quality cases the public concerns about. The Dongfeng Honda's engine defective issue was reprimanded by consumers as expected. Meanwhile, Envision's broken shaft issue and GAC Trumpchi's body framework fracture problem were on the list as well.

According to the figures released by China Consumer Association (CCA), the association's system recorded complaints about auto products (including auto parts) up to 20,474 cases last year, increasing 34.3% over the previous year. The sum of complaints about the after-sales service, the contract and the product quality accounted for 70% of total cases, occupying 30.59%, 22.19% and 20.40% respectively.