Southern China to be Skoda’s next target market

“Skoda has made 88,000 deliveries globally for the first 10 months of this year, including 22,600 deliveries in China. Currently, 95% of Skoda models sold in Chinese market fall in the scope of China’s vehicles purchase tax cut policy - consumers who buy vehicles with a displacement of 1.6L or below only pay half of the original10%purchase tax, which could make a great difference to buyers.”said Andreas Hafemann, Skoda China President at VW.

Stick with 50,000-unit goal

Skoda has set a sales target of 50,000 units in China by the year of 2018 during Winfried Vahland’s tenure as Skoda Global President and the company said they will stick with it. “We will stick with the 50,000-unit goal, while it really also depends on the development of China’s auto market.” said Hafemann.

Qi Ouyang, Skoda Executive Director of sales at Shanghai VW, added “Skoda is a unique independent brand, other than a low-end VW brand. In the future, we will be dedicated to increase skoda’s sales volume for sure, but will also focus on expanding Skoda’s brand attractiveness.”

SUV ！SUV！SUV！

For the first 10 months of this year, Skoda’s sales volume has exceeded 22,000 units. Hafemann noted Skoda has already introduced 3 new models this year and will focus on SUV models in the following research and development.

Hafemann said the 2016 Skoda Yeti has been a success since its debut, greatly boosting the company’s sales. Considered the prevailing“SUV fever” in China and also the consumers’ inputs, Skoda is planning to introduce a larger SUV model while the debut of a Class-A0 SUV remains uncertain.

"Go South" Strategy

During Auto Guangzhou, the biggest motor exhibition in Southern China, Skoda, following VW and Audi, coincidently introduced its “Go South” strategy, in which defines Southern China as theirkey target market.

Ouyang explained “Go South” is actually a part of VW Group’s China strategy because Southern China is of great importance for the whole Group and also Skoda’s 50,000-unit sales target. He said Skoda will offer more dedicated products and services featuring southern characters specially for the southern buyers, bring more promotions in southern cities like Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and provide supports for southern dealers so as to assist them improving service quality and further expanding sales network to cover more areas.

Besides, Skoda also sees the values of middle-sized and small cities, which have made their contributionin the growth of the Chinese auto market, and will make plans for these areas accordingly.