Author |Chai Xuchen.
Edit |Cao Anxun.
This year's car market is the most real folding world, when the mainstream brands in the domestic market are working hard for survival and war, Rolls-Royce, the "ceiling" of the luxury car market, has already been relayed by the pilgrimage-like Internet celebrities to the altar of performance.
At the beginning of January, Rolls-Royce announced that global sales in 2023 will hit the highest sales record in its 119-year history, reaching 6,032 units.
Behind the dazzling results, China's "Internet celebrities" have made great contributions, and celebrities with millions of fans such as Xiao Yang and Simba are all Rolls-Royce owners, and even have more than one.
On social platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu, many Internet celebrities announced that they liked Rolls-Royce and Cullinan's creative content, and some people jokingly called "Internet celebrities have a Rolls-Royce per capita". The live broadcast e-commerce industry is ushering in a period of rapid development, and a large number of employees have become rich and have enjoyed the dividends of the times.
From a macro point of view, Rolls-Royce's hot sale discount is a polarized consumer trend in China and even the world.
On the one hand, under the favor of high-net-worth individuals, luxury cars, luxury houses and high-end consumption markets such as Hermes and Chanel have risen; On the other hand, there is the rise of Pinduoduo, the downgrading of middle-class consumption, and the battle of many industries. No one is immune to this unprecedented change in consumer demand.
In the domestic consumer market, 5 million yuan of "foundation", tens of millions of "standard configurations", and an uncapped customization system have made this top British car brand the ultimate "white moonlight" in the minds of countless people.
For a long time, China has been Rolls-Royce's second largest market, after the United States, and is highly regarded by Chinese high-net-worth individuals.
With the advent of the era of Internet wealth, this kind of scarcity and noble attributes, which are somewhat "unattainable", have naturally become the "password" for Internet bloggers to repeatedly try and test traffic grabbing and personal packaging. Identity and emotional value have become the "primary productive forces".
Brother Xiao Yang once said that he bought Rolls-Royce mainly for business reception, which can change the other party's perception of himself, "There is a brand chairman who is here, and he has to use this car to receive him at the airport."
For the top streamers, this "double R" logo simply and "crudely" shows their social status and economic strength, and can also bring certain commercial value to the company.
However, in reality, in addition to buying second-hand, there are not a few waist and bottom Internet celebrities who rent a car and pose for photos, and they are more eager for the attention that Rolls-Royce brings as a luxury car.
On the other hand, Rolls-Royce officially recognized the purchasing power of the Internet "upstarts", and specially invited the Internet celebrity "Wanwan" couple to stand and promote their signature model "Cullinan" in 2021.
A public relations person who used to work for Rolls-Royce revealed that inviting Internet celebrities to promote publicity is a cost-effective marketing method. The company will not directly offer endorsement fees, but invite them to participate in VIP events that "money can't buy", and almost no influencer will refuse to connect with Rolls-Royce.
Although such a move has also caused controversy, it has to be admitted that the once low-key and noble Rolls-Royce brand and owners are gradually fading from the mysterious and low-key undertone. The traditional "old money" car owners who originally came from the real estate and financial industries have begun to shift to young entrepreneurs and wealthy people in the Internet, technology, and games.
For Rolls-Royce, this is an opportunity for the user group to break the circle.
Due to the extremely high financial requirements of customers, Rolls-Royce's previous sales have been maintained at about 1,000 units per year for many years. Li Long, the former director of Rolls-Royce China, once revealed that its potential target customers are those ultra-high-net-worth individuals on the Hurun wealth list, with more than 65% of car owners with total assets of more than 1 billion yuan.
However, the turning point occurred after the epidemic, the global economy continued to decline, and low-cost consumption became the mainstream, but Rolls-Royce ushered in contrarian growth, continuously refreshing historical sales records.
In 2021, Rolls-Royce's global sales jumped from more than 3,000 units in the previous year to 5,586 units, and then gradually increased to more than 6,000 units last year.
In fact, not only Rolls-Royce, but also ultra-luxury brands, including Mai**, Lamborghini, etc., have also achieved rapid growth in the past year, have refreshed their sales results, and have also made a lot of money in China.
Among them, Mercedes-Benz's overall sales in 2023 will decline slightly, but its top luxury matrix will achieve rapid growth, and the Mai** and G-class off-road vehicles will achieve % growth respectively; The supercar brand Lamborghini also made history by selling more than 10,000 for the first time last year.
The seemingly abnormal performance is actually just the A side of the evolution of the consumption pattern. On the other hand, entry-level luxury brands with less than one million yuan are increasingly lonely.
Last year, Porsche's deliveries in China fell by 15 percent year-on-year; In order to maintain sales, the main brand of Mercedes-Benz has entered the Red Sea of 300,000 yuan; Lotus, which won the F1 championship for a second time, also launched a 10,000-yuan model this year to compromise sales.
And they were once the favorites of the middle class, but now they have fallen off the altar and are no longer sought after, and in the era of smart electric vehicles, they are being hit by new brands such as domestic Yangwang, Zeekr, and Weilai.
This sentiment has also been transmitted to the secondary market, with Jia Xinguang, director of the China Automobile Dealers Association, pointing out that the price reduction of the Porsche Paramela is more than 10%, and the price reduction of the Macan model is even more than 20%. On the other hand, Rolls-Royce had a price increase of 5-200,000 yuan in February last year, and the average price has now doubled compared with ten years ago.
But whether it is Rolls-Royce's upward, or Porsche's and BBA's downward, they are essentially abandoning the collapsed middle class and beginning to move towards the poles to find a more suitable living space.
Implicit in this is the polarization of K-shaped consumption. A similar plot has long been staged in the luxury market.
In recent years, as the leading brands in the luxury industry, Hermes, Chanel, LV, etc., have continued to "turn away" ordinary consumers with price increases and distribution, but they are still in the market and a pack is hard to find.
Chanel rose the hardest, with an average increase of about 40%, and some product lines even rose by more than 50%. Taking Chanel CF as an example, it took nearly 40,000 yuan to win this bag in 2019, it exceeded 60,000 last year, and it directly rushed to 80,000 yuan after the latest price increase. Many consumers lamented that Chanel was going to abandon the middle class.
Continuously, it has helped Chanel to link high-net-worth individuals more closely, boosting the revenue and profit of the parent company LVMH to rise to 86.2 billion and 15.2 billion euros respectively last year, and at the same time, it has also allowed Chairman Bernard Arnault to top the throne of the world's richest man several times.
On the other hand, the once unrivaled light luxury and second-tier luxury brands MK, Jimmy Choo, Versace, Coach, and Gucci are gradually lonely, and their halo is no longer there.
MK and Coach even fought a ** war, MK once put more than 1,000 new products on Tmall with a very low **, and Coach shouted the slogan of "as low as two folds". Soon, their value in the secondary market also shrank dramatically, and the ** price basically had to be discounted.
In fact, all brands related to the concept of affordable luxury have fallen into a new existential crisis. Pandora, which once sold 100 million pieces a year, has been selling all the way in recent years, and has successively withdrawn from Sanlitun and Wangfu Central; Swarovski, which is sought after by the middle class with its crystal, is now also questioned about the "IQ tax" because of this material.
In this regard, the "2023 China High-quality Consumption Report" released by the VIP Research Institute pointed out that consumers are becoming more rational and smarter. Mass consumers who are sensitive to the best begin to reject brand premiums and embrace economic consumption; The more insensitive high-net-worth customers are, the more differentiated and personalized consumption they are, and for them, the more expensive it is, the lower the consumption risk and the smaller the choice cost.
These two changes in consumer behavior based on consumption perceptions and income levels will profoundly affect the current and future Chinese consumer market. Either high-end, brand development, or civilian, product-based development, there is no middle choice.
The same is true for the automotive industry, where Porsche and BBA, which once belonged to the same luxury sequence, have been forced to enter a new round of high-end competition.
Or compete for and consolidate high-net-worth individuals, or downwards to attract the middle class and mass consumers. Luxury car brands have also come to a fork in the road of fate.
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