Pushed by the incentives of vehicle purchasing tax benefits and winter purchasing boom, passenger vehicles have a production volume of 2.14m units and sales volume of 2.12m units respectively, all recording historical high. Self-owned brands perform well compared with slow growth of joint-venture brands in terms of annual sales volume. Geely, JAC and GAC Trumpchi have fulfilled the annual sales plan ahead of schedule one by one in the previous 11 months. Some joint-venture brands such as Beijing Benz, Changan Mazda have also completed the sales target ahead of schedule.

 

However, apart from the booming market, increasing problems cannot be ignored, especially the frequent “difficult right-safeguarding” in product qualities. According to the sales data of the previous 11 months provided by Automobile Complaint Website, a great number of complaint cases appear in E-series of luxury brand Beijing Benz, Mazda3 of mainstream joint-venture brand Changan Mazda and GS4 of self-owned brand GAC Trumpchi.

 

Beijing Benz, which is frequently releasing new products and creating new sales record this year, also faces frequent complaints from car owners, thus having to constantly issuing recall notice. An automobile analyst who is unwilling to be identified said that, although the quality issue is not directly influencing the sales volume, such problems which cannot be solved instantly will gradually destroy the brand’s reputation.

 

Mazda is also standing top on the complaint list. Mazda sold 13,400 units from January to November in 2015, increasing 45.4% compared with the same period of last year, ranking 32 in the passenger vehicle market. However, website data also reveals that Mazda tops 20 on the complaint list.

 

As for the phenomenon, some experts expressed their view that, the increasing complaint cases reflects products’ quality issue or potential function fault on one hand, and it also reflects enterprises’ lack of responsibility towards product quality or consumers. In this period with ever slowing sales growth, after-sales service, the life line connecting consumers’ loyalty and brands’ reputation, will inevitably become the key point of continuous development for automobile enterprises, and even the automobile industry.

 

Automobile manufacturers should pay great attention on it and take practical actions to burden the responsibilities.