The snowballing effect of China’s anti-monopoly policies, the struggling Chinese stock market and the overall slowing down economic growth, all these factors look like good reasons to explain the once-to-be privilege luxury carmakers’unconventional moves that they have decided to join the price war.
From this March, the price war in China keeps escalating. Till this November 11th, aka the China’s biggest on-line shopping day, many luxury brands excites its buyers with average 75% to 85% discounts, while some of them get even lower with 50% off.
On Tmall.com, Alibaba’s on-line shopping platform, the first 100 customers who buy Cadillac ATS-L25T2014 with sticker price of 288,800 rmb, could get a 50% off. All Audi models, expect Q5 SUV, come with a nearly 30% off. BMW’s offers are around 20% off for almost all models but X3. Mercedes-Benz, the diehard Germany carmaker, also provides a 20% off for C-Class sedan and almost 30% off for E-Class sedan in part of areas in China.
Led by Audi, BMW and Benz, a brunch of non-mainstream luxury carmakers also joined the price war.
According to J.D.Power, the price war started in this march and the offers of the luxury models hadaveraged toan 84.7% discount in April. This year, half of the luxury brands have directly or indirectly lower the price to stimulate sales and, in this way, lower the inventory pressure.
Analysts believe, buyers will see more discount luxury models in the future.
