Photo/Zhang Jian

Jan.15 (NBD) -- The luxury car market in China posted good performance in 2018, but Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), unfortunately, was the other way around.

In the first 11 months of last year, sales of JLR has dropped over 19 percent in China market, driving it down from the forth place to the seventh place among the luxury car makers in the country.

Moreover, its plants in China and the UK also experienced temporary closure as demand fell last year.

It has been eight years since JLR's presence in the Chinese market in 2010. In the first few years, it recorded splendid growth and quickly became the forth luxury car maker that sold over 100,000 units in the market in 2014.

However, the situation started to change in 2015, not long after the car maker released its localized model through its joint venture with Chinese car maker Chery.

The model is not well received by consumers. An auto dealer said that for one thing it is overpriced; for the other its reputation was undermined after its gearbox defects were exposed by CCTV through its "315" consumer day show.

With the number of localized cars grows, more problems started to crop up. Statistics showed that JLR recalled over 200,000 cars in 2017 and 2018 in a total of 15 batches, which was almost all it has sold during the two years.

It also can be noticed on auto forums that JLR received complaints from consumers far more than its rivals.

But the complaints haven't been addressed properly and efficiently, which further undermined its reputation, added the dealer.

In addition, market decision makers at the company also have to blame. Li Yanwei, analyst of luxury cars, noted that JLR's products have its own advantage but its sales department responded slowly to the market.

The dealer said that JLR originally served a smaller group of people. But as the localized production push ahead, the previous management policies no longer work out. Moreover, it is hard to balance the interests of Chery and JLR, and the process of weighing pros and cons slows down its decision making.

As more and more rivals started to offer medium and large SUV models, consumers have more options to make, eating away JLR's market share in SUV.

However, the localized models released at later time are still overpriced and dealers quickly cut down prices after the models hit the market, which led to a further decrease of market share, the dealer further explained.

It is noticed that JLR has started to make changes since the second half of 2018. To ensure profits of dealers, JLR began to stop production to balance the demand and supply. In addition, it has replaced the head of the marketing and sales unit IMSS with a Chinese. Moreover, it strengthened its localization operations by releasing Chinese slogans.

Email: tanyuhan@nbd.com.cn