GMAP Support Continental Tires with China Expansion

Continental Tires is the latest global retailer in China to source market expertise and insight provided by GMAP Shanghai, part of Callcredit Information Group.The leading German tire manufacturer is aiming to become one of China's top tire producers and suppliers over the next five to six years through an aggressive expansion of its retail network. GMAP, network planning experts, have been chosen to help support Continental with market analysis and site selection in China for its BestDrive stores.

Continental's BestDrive stores are a larger auto store format which offer higher-end consumers with broader car services and maintenance. Development of this format is a key initiative to Continental's rapid growth in China, as well as a major step in building presence in the local retail market, especially in the service sector. As such, it plans to grow this format by over 100 shops per year from 2016.

GMAP Shanghai combines more than 25 years' global network planning expertise with a local team of analysts to support both international and domestic clients in China. GMAP has extensive experience in the Automotive sector, both within China and globally. Using advanced geographic modelling tools, GMAP uses data driven demand and supply factors in order to enable retailers to make smarter decisions within today's increasingly competitive Chinese market.

Luke Whittam, Asia Pacific Director - GMAP, commented: "We are extremely delighted to work with Continental in a sector which is rapidly growing in China, and for which GMAP have deep experience throughout several global markets."

Callcredit Information Group's leading approach to deploying consumer information brings together experts across the fields of credit referencing, marketing services, interactive solutions and consultative analytics to provide clients with a range of innovative and effective products to discover new customers and to engage with current customers to optimise and increase profitability.

Products include award-winning fraud verification tools and database solutions to positively verify consumers, global operations to help expand businesses into new markets, digital solutions to improve the overall journey consumers make during interaction with a brand, customer handling to ensure consumer satisfaction at all levels and consumer marketing data and segmentation to improve understanding and targeting of customers and prospects.

Callcredit also offers products to assess a customer's credit risk and affordability and its experts in collections and recoveries provide tailored debt recovery and tracing tools. The company's market analysis and network planning function helps organisations develop profitable retail networks, and its tools in multi bureau, analytics and metrics work to provide fully assessed bureau data.