数量VS.档次：汽车销售大战的路线之争

    体育专栏作者瑞德•史密斯曾说过：“写作并不难，只需掏心挖肺地对待读者即可。”

    汽车行业可能也有类似的表述。这不是件难事：只需要设计并造出好车就行。

    当然，事情并没有这么简单。通用汽车（General Motors）和福特汽车（Ford Motor）最近的负面新闻表明，最为老道的汽车制造商也会在傻瓜式点火开关的安装或燃油经济性计算精确性上面栽跟头。

    在汽车营销领域，一场争论正在如火如荼地进行当中，简而言之就是：车型数量与档次之争。

    分析师约翰•墨菲是“数量”派，他是美银美林（Bank of America Merrill Lynch）长期调查《汽车之战》（Car Wars）的作者。墨菲钟爱新车型，而且车型越多越好。在他的不懈努力之下，他所得出的结论是，市场占有率与制造商推出新车型的数量和速度有直接关系。在承认搭配、定价、执行、销售和品牌影响力的重要性的同时，他还认为，生产线扩张、更新的速度越快，销售业绩的增长也就越快。他写道：“更新率和展厅年限指标是企业获得/失去市场份额的主要原因。成功的新产品会带来更高的市场份额。”

    “档次”派阵营的主要人物则是资深营销顾问、自称行业异类的皮特•德•罗伦索。德•罗伦索常驻底特律，是博客“汽车极端分子”的博主。他称自己是一位“非常规、朴实无华、最热门事实的提供者”，而且一直是品牌诚信的忠实拥趸。他在6月的博文中写道：“人们对品牌的看法能造就、也能毁掉一家汽车公司，无论这个品牌在此前任何一段时间内拥有多么悠久或辉煌的历史。”

    德•罗伦索一直都在批评豪华汽车品牌使用新车型来提升销量的做法。他认为，这种做法会有损品牌形象，因为品牌被用在了与其传承和历史毫无关联的车型身上。他指出：“这些厂商认为，如果公司能照顾到每一个细分市场（有的是真实存在的，有的是公司想象出来的），他们的生存和利润就有了保障。但这是行不通的，而且这种举措会带来痛苦的后果。”

    《汽车之战》的一个独特优势在于，它将竞争情报、新闻简报、观察评论和传闻分析进行过滤加工，然后整合成为未来产品趋势的严密分析。在最近一期涵盖2015-2018年趋势的调查中，墨菲按照车型名称和类别分别列出了进入美国市场的每一个重新设计的车型和新车型。他发现了新跨界车型的崛起，而这些车型出身于过去专注于轿车、轿跑和跑车的业界豪门，例如奥迪、宝马、捷豹和宾利，而且他还以赞许的口吻提到了这个趋势对于销售的积极影响。他写道：“如果大量的新型德系豪华CUV（混合型多用途车）在市场上得以热销，那么欧洲OEM（原始设备制造商）厂商的市场份额可能会面临一些上行风险。”

    知名品牌这种将产品线扩展到陌生领域的做法几乎让德•罗伦索感到抓狂。德•罗伦索并不会拿什么调查来说事，而是有效地借助多年来形成的行业直觉。他指出，汽车制造商，尤其是那些拥有赛车传承的制造商，应该致力于制造轿车，同时将跨界车型和SUV交给吉普和路虎这样的生产厂家。讨论迅速崛起的德国豪华车制造商的决策时，他会变得尤为刻薄，因为这种讨论似乎总是围绕增加车型的种类——宝马Active Tourer车型，有人要吗？——它们的目的在于更新产品线，从而增加销量：

    “（奥迪）似乎患上了最近所有德国品牌无一幸免的传染病，这是一种面面俱到的可怕打法，它让消费者眼花缭乱，而且也让这些制造商放松了警惕，开始犯错误。”

    “Writing is easy,” the sports columnist Red Smith once said. “You just open a vein and bleed.”

    The same might be said of the car business. It’s easy: You just design and build great cars.

    Of course, it isn’t that simple. As the recent misfortunes of General Motors GM 0.19% and Ford Motor F -0.30% demonstrate, something as straightforward as installing foolproof ignition switches or accurately calculating fuel economy can elude the most experienced of automakers.

    When it comes to marketing cars, there is an emerging debate that can most succinctly be described as mass vs. class.

    On the mass side is analyst John Murphy, author of the long-running “Car Wars” study for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Murphy is a fan of new models, the more the merrier. He has consistently demonstrated that market share is directly related to the number of new models a company introduces and the speed with which it refreshes them. While he concedes the importance of mix, pricing, execution, distribution, and brand power, he argues that the more rapidly product lines are expanded and refreshed, the more rapidly sales will grow. “Our measures of replacement rate and showroom age are the major driver of market share gains and losses,” he writes. “Successful new products drive higher market share.”

    Leading the arguments for the class side is longtime marketing consultant and self-styled industry curmudgeon Peter De Lorenzo. De Lorenzo, who is based in Detroit, leads the AutoExtremist blog, calls himself “a purveyor of the bare-knuckled, unvarnished, high-octane truth,” and has been a rigorous defender of brand integrity. “How a brand is perceived can make or break a car company, regardless of how long and illustrious a run that brand has enjoyed up until any given point in time,” he wrote in June.

    De Lorenzo has been a persistent critic of luxury brands that use new models to grow volume. He believes they are compromising their identity by using their brand for vehicles that have no connection to heritage and history. “They believe that if they cover every niche in the market–both real and imagined–it will ensure their survival and profitability,” he contends. “But it doesn’t work,” he writes. “There are painful ramifications that come with their actions.”

    One of the unique strengths of “Car Wars” is its distillation of competitive intelligence, press clippings, speculation, and rumor analysis into a rigorous analysis of future product trends. In the most recent edition covering the years 2015 to 2018, Murphy identifies by model name and segment, every redesign and new model coming to the U.S. market. He sees a surge of new crossovers vehicles bearing the badges of luxury manufacturers that previously concentrated on sedans, coupes, and sports cars–among them Audi, BMW, Jaguar, and Bentley–and writes approvingly about the positive impact on sales. “If the numerous new German Lux CUVs are well received in the market,” he writes, “there may be some upside risk” in the market share of European OEMs.

    Such product line extensions into unfamiliar segments by long-established brands induce a state of near apoplexy in De Lorenzo. Brandishing no research but effectively flexing his instinct from years in the business, he argues that automakers–particularly those with a racing heritage–should stick to making cars and leave crossovers and SUVs to the likes of Jeep and Land Rover. He gets especially vitriolic in discussing the strategies of the fast-rising German luxury makers, which seem to keep adding more body styles–BMW Active Tourer anyone?– aimed at freshening up their product lines and adding incremental volume:

    • “[Audi] seems to be falling victim to the disease that’s infecting all of the German brands of late, the dreaded being all things to all people daze that leads these manufacturers to drop their guard and make mistakes.”