As an enterprise headquartered in Wuhan, Dongfeng Honda has always exuded the Wuhan spirit of "daring to be the first and pursuing excellence".
This can be seen from Dongfeng Honda's actions such as always adhering to the brand concept of "staying ahead", the first batch of announcements to transform into a "value-creating enterprise", and the first to launch a new energy joint venture independent brand.
In 2023, rejuvenation will become the key word of Dongfeng Honda. At the age of 20, Dongfeng Honda released a new development strategy, realized brand renewal, and completed the creation of new product brands, service brands and user brands, accumulating strength and laying the foundation for comprehensive transformation.
In 2024, Dongfeng Honda will fully open the "electric moment". In terms of manufacturing, new products and marketing, Dongfeng Honda will push the wave of electrification, intelligence and digitalization to a high point, so that consumers can re-understand the power of joint venture brands and return to the C position in the Chinese auto market.
The top-level design is old and new
2023 marks the 20th anniversary of Dongfeng Honda's founding. Along the way, Dongfeng Honda has successfully realized the transformation of its role in the Chinese market from introducing models to seizing the market to gradually leading the market. CR-V and Civic and other models have dominated the market segments for a long time.
Today, China's auto industry is accelerating from the fuel era to the electric era. Dongfeng Honda conforms to the changes of the times and comprehensively upgrades its strategy and brand to meet new challenges.
At the top-level design level, Dongfeng Honda released a new "Future 2030" strategy at the 20th anniversary event in July 2023, planning to achieve "tens of millions of products" in 2030 and achieve the goal of cumulative sales of 10 million vehicles. Relying on the e:NS brand, the strong electric intelligent hybrid technology brand and the new independent pure electric brand Lingxi, Dongfeng Honda will build a new product matrix, with the proportion of electrified products exceeding 50% by 2025 and more than 10 pure electric models by 2030.
For the company's positioning, Dongfeng Honda has rethought. In the future, Dongfeng Honda will transform from a product-centric "traditional manufacturing enterprise" to a user-centered "value-creating enterprise".
Two months later, Dongfeng Honda held a brand renewal and new energy vehicle brand ceremony in Wuhan, and released a new brand logo and image of "stay ahead" representing Dongfeng Honda's new concept and new proposition, as well as a new energy vehicle brand - Lingxi.
Dongfeng Honda has thus entered a new stage of development. In the field of technology brands, Dongfeng Honda has completed the "trinity" layout of strong electric intelligent hybrid, e:NS and Lingxi. Together, they constitute Dongfeng Honda's three major new energy technology brands, which will accelerate the launch of more new energy products. It is also matched by a unified and upgraded service brand, channel brand and user brand.
Under the guidance of the new service concept, Dongfeng Honda's sales and after-sales service team will provide users with six service commitments: all-round butler, full-speed maintenance, comprehensive transparency, all-quality protection, full-time protection, and wholehearted selection.
In terms of channel brands, Dongfeng Honda's adjusted plan includes the deployment of supermarkets, special stores, image upgrades, and improvement of digital channels. Among them, the focus of Dongfeng Honda's franchise stores will shift from sales to service and experience. In November 2023, Dongfeng Honda's first Joy Space (special store) will be opened in Taiyuan, which will provide users with higher quality services.
In terms of user brand, in December 2023, Dongfeng Honda held the first user ecology conference and user brand conference to release the new user brand "Benjia". In the future, the "Home" brand will start from the four dimensions of "Home Experience", "Home Service", "Home Community" and "Home Growth", and carry out reform and optimization around all the contact points of the whole life cycle of Dongfeng Honda car owners, build a complete user ecosystem, and create a better travel experience. The birth of the independent user brand "Benjia" marks another step forward for Dongfeng Honda to build a new type of user relationship, and will promote the brand and user relationship to enter a new chapter of development.
Continuous innovation in product marketing
For the macro level, Dongfeng Honda will complete the reconstruction of the top-level design in 2023, which will guide the future development direction of the company; At the micro level, Dongfeng Honda is down-to-earth, step by step, iteratively upgrading its products and constantly making innovative attempts in marketing.
In 2023, in order to strengthen product competitiveness and meet the more diversified travel needs of users, Dongfeng Honda will intensively launch a number of new vehicles to the market, covering three types of power: fuel, hybrid and pure electric.
The new models include the all-new CR-V e:PHEV, CR-V HEV, the all-new HR-V, the all-new Inspie e:PHEV, as well as the **UR-V (gasoline), M-NV (pure electric), and Elysian (hybrid).
Among them, the all-new model HR-V combines the advantages of CR-V and XR-V, positioning itself as an "urban creeper", equipped with fuel and hybrid power, forming a strong impact on the 150,000-level SUV market; The all-new Inspie is Dongfeng Honda's first model to be equipped with both the i-MMD hybrid system and the Honda Connect 40. The model of Honda Sensing 360 is the leader of the joint venture plug-in hybrid flagship.
In terms of marketing, Dongfeng Honda "dares to be the first and pursues excellence", and with the help of the popular film and television drama "Hurricane", it innovatively launched the annual marketing campaign of Civic - "Hurricane C Guest". It has created a series of colorful and influential activities throughout the year, such as in-depth analysis of the new generation Civic Type R, fan parties, themed user experience activities, corner racing test drive experience activities, and racing racing events, which continue to maintain the popularity and attention of the Civic family models in the Chinese market and play a non-negligible role in the increase of model sales.
In the innovation of brand, product, marketing, service and channel, Dongfeng Honda achieved a total annual sales volume of about 61370,000 units, and the cumulative number of users in China exceeded 8 million. Among them, the sales volume of the CR-V and the Civic have accumulated 210,000+, and the sales of the Civic have reached 170,000+.
Dongfeng Honda has won many awards in various industry selections such as value retention rate, intelligence, and quality. For example, Dongfeng Honda dominates the 2023 China Automobile Retention Rate List, ranking in the leading position in the three-year retention rate list of joint venture brands; In the evaluation of the 2023 IVISTA China Smart Car Index, Dongfeng Honda's new-generation CR-V won the "Five-Star Intelligence" star rating with the highest test score (G grade). In the 2023 China Initial Quality Study (IQS) and 2023 China Automotive Product Attractiveness Index (APEAL) rankings, Dongfeng Honda ranked first in the quality of mainstream brand new cars.
Second, the Civic and CR-V are respectively in the leading position in the quality of new cars in their respective market segments, and the Inspie is in the leading position in the charm index of mid-size high-end sedans.
On the basis of the new top-level design and excellent results, Dongfeng Honda will fully open the "electric moment" in 2024. This will be reflected in the three areas of manufacturing, product and marketing.
It is understood that Dongfeng Honda is building an industry-leading digital smart factory, aiming to provide strong support for its electrification strategy to produce future new energy models.
In terms of models, the second model of Dongfeng Honda's pure electric series e:NS2, as the first "hunting coupe" in the pure electric market in its class, has been unveiled at the 2023 Guangzhou Auto Show, and will be launched at the Beijing Auto Show in April 2024. In addition, Dongfeng Honda's new energy brand Lingxi's first model, Lingxi L, will also be officially launched within the year.
In terms of marketing, Dongfeng Honda will implement changes around the value concept of "user-centric" in accordance with the previous plan and build an integrated marketing system pyramid.
The innovation and upgrading of the whole value chain is bound to inject strong potential energy into the transformation and development of Dongfeng Honda, promote Dongfeng Honda to return to the C position in the market, and continue to be proud of the leader in the market.
Wen Xue sincerely.