Analysis on the development of national tire brands

Recently, a forum conducted a survey on tire brand awareness to understand the choice tendency of car owners when changing tires. The survey results show that 39.02% of customers choose Michelin tires, 19.51% of car owners choose Pirelli, 17.07% of car owners choose Bridgestone and horse tires respectively, and only 7.33% of car owners choose original standard tires or tires of other brands.

It can be seen from the above survey that the first choice of consumers is mostly big brands such as Michelin and Bridgestone, and few people choose national brand tires.

In this regard, the general view of most practitioners in the tire industry is that most of the brands of international tire giants have accumulated for nearly a century, and their market recognition is naturally high. Domestic national brands are still very young and their brand recognition is low.

So, where is the way out for national brands? The reporter communicated with some people in the industry and hoped to get some enlightenment from it.

A marketing staff of Jinhu tire told the editor that in addition to improving product quality, Chinese tire enterprises still need to do their homework in two aspects, "one is marketing; the other is product concept, which is to do the products needed by the market." He said that at present, most domestic national brand tires can only meet the "low-level" quality demands of consumers, which is far from enough.

What is the "low-level" quality appeal?

"Simply put, it's the length of time the tire is used." The above-mentioned person told the editor that the length of tire service time refers to its wear resistance. Once there was a consumption concept that "what can be used and lived is good", but with the improvement of people's living standards, only "what can be used and lived" is far from meeting people's needs. Now, the comfort, safety performance, noise level, wet skid resistance, ice skid resistance and grip performance of tires are gradually entering the consideration range of consumers.

When communicating with tire world network, a staff member of Dongfeng Automobile Technology Center also expressed a similar view: "in terms of quality, Chinese tires are not inferior to foreign big brands. However, the tires produced by Chinese enterprises still lag behind foreign big brands in terms of noise and rolling resistance."

The person said that when automobile manufacturers select matching tires, these are very important reference indicators, while Chinese enterprises start relatively late in these aspects, and some enterprises have not even realized its importance so far.

"The research and development of big brand tires is based on consumer demand." A person with many years of tire sales experience told the editor that big brands such as Michelin and Goodyear have a very good grasp of the needs of consumers. For example, consumers complain that tires are noisy and fuel-efficient. These brands will improve the above problems by optimizing the tread design to effectively improve the wear mileage and service life, but the price is no different from that of the previous generation.

"The existence of these products has gradually increased the appetite of consumers and squeezed the living space of national brands." The salesperson said so.

The industry insiders who exchanged with the editor of tire world network believe that production and consumption have not been closely linked, which is indeed a big problem in the development of China's tire industry. For a long time, most Chinese enterprises are "behind closed doors", do not understand where consumers' needs are, and can not keep up with the pace of the times, which has seriously affected the influence of national brands.

An insider said that although Chinese tire enterprises have begun to pay attention to the performance of products, it is undeniable that the transformation of enterprises is still passive. "Products should not only stay in the past, but also meet the present and even lead the future. Only by changing ideas and solidly building brands recognized by consumers can national tire enterprises become bigger and stronger.". The person finally said.

——From China tire network