麦肯锡：中国车市将越来越不赚钱

Amid the hoopla of the Guangzhou auto show, which opened to the press Thursday, management consulting firm McKinsey & Company delivered a depressing message to auto makers: The fast-growing China auto market could become a lot less profitable.

周四对媒体开放的广州车展好不热闹，然而管理咨询公司麦肯锡(McKinsey & Company)向汽车生产商传递了一条令人沮丧的消息：中国汽车市场在迅速扩张的同时，盈利性却有可能大幅降低。

In a report released on Wednesday on China's auto market up to 2020, consultants Arthur Wang, Wenkan Liao and Arnt-Philipp Hein say auto prices in the world's largest market for cars have been eroding by between 4% to 6% on a compound annual basis over the past decade.

在周三发布的关于2020年之前中国汽车市场的报告中，麦肯锡的咨询师王平(Arthur Wang)、廖文侃和海因(Arnt-Philipp Hein)说，按复合变化率计算，世界最大汽车市场中国的汽车价格在过去10年每年下降4%到6%。

'Prices are expected to fall over the next five to 10 years,' the authors warn.

报告作者警告说，预计未来五到10年价格还会下降。

The reason, explains another McKinsey consultant, Paul Gao, isn't upgrades. The firm believes increasingly affluent customers will move up to bigger, more expensive cars with more features. Indeed, the McKinsey report suggests higher-end cars will crowd out the market for the least expensive cars, so that vehicles priced at less than 80,000 yuan will shrink from roughly one third of the market now to one quarter by 2020.

另一位麦肯锡咨询师高旭(Paul Gao)说，降价原因不是产品的更新换代。麦肯锡相信越来越富裕的消费者会将自己的座驾升级为更大、更贵、功能更全的汽车。事实上麦肯锡上述报告就提出，高端汽车将挤占廉价汽车的市场，到2020年，8万元以下汽车的市场份额将从现在的三分之一左右降至四分之一。

The problem, he says, is that the rush to add features will pressure margins. Advertising and labor costs will also rise. 'The profitability trend will come under pressure in years to come,' Mr. Gao says.

他说，问题在于厂商争先恐后地为汽车添加功能，将对利润率造成挤压。广告和劳动力成本也将上升。高旭说，未来几年车企的盈利能力将会承受压力。

Chinese and foreign auto makers are likely to overlook this inconvenient trend in favor of more encouraging figures.

中外汽车厂商可能会忽略这种不好的趋势，着眼于一些更加鼓舞人心的数字。

For example, 60% of Chinese will live in cities by 2020, compared with around half now. This increase in the urbanization rate will have increase people’s demand for mobility, the authors said.

比如到2020年，60%的中国人将居住在城市，高于现在的50%左右。报告的作者说，城市化率的上升将提高人们对移动性的需求。

In addition, Chinese households earning more than 80,000 yuan (around $12,500) per year will increase to 58% in the same period, up from 17% in 2011. 'Higher incomes plus low auto penetrations suggest that the passenger car market has not reached the saturation level,' the report said.

除此以外，到2020年时年收入8万元以上的中国家庭占中国全部家庭的比例将从2011年的17%增加到58%。报告说，收入提高而汽车渗透率低下，这意味着乘用车市场还没有达到饱和状态。

The report outlines a few other reasons to be pessimistic, including unpredictable government policies. Authorities in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou -- where car density has topped a 'burdensome' 250 vehicles per kilometer of roads have already introduced restrictions on car usage. By 2020, around 20 more cities will reach the same levels, possibly prompting officials to implement similar restrictions, the consulting company said.

报告还列出了另外几个悲观理由，如政府政策的不可预料。北京、上海和广州的汽车密度已经超过每公里道路250辆的水平，不堪重负。这三个城市的政府已经推出限行措施。麦肯锡说，到2020年，另外大约20座城市也将达到同样的水平，可能会促使政府实施类似限制措施。

Selling cars won't get easier in terms of marketing, either, as the Chinese marketplace grows increasingly complex. McKinsey says China's booming auto market can be divvied up in 25 distinct geographic clusters -- think European Union, only without the need to translate everything into Estonian or Catalan.

随着中国市场变得日益复杂，汽车的营销也不会变得更加容易。麦肯锡说，中国汽车市场可以划分为25个不同的地理集群，跟欧盟差不多，只是不需要把什么东西都翻译成爱沙尼亚语或加泰罗尼亚语。

But language might be one of only a few shared attributes -- and even that doesn't always hold. Consumers will differ from one market to another even when places are relatively near each other.

但语言可能只是少有的几种共同属性之一，而且还不一定总是如此。哪怕隔得相对较近，不同市场的消费者还是存在区别。

Folks in the cities of Shanghai and Fuzhou are 'more sensitive to price' (read: they're cheap). People in Hangzhou and the province of Shandong 'care about attractive external styling' (they're tacky).

上海人和福州人更在意价格(这可以理解为他们喜欢便宜的车)。杭州人和山东人关心漂亮的外观(这可以理解为他们喜欢外观俗气的车)。

Car buyers in the neighboring cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou also display diverging consumer behavior. For advertising, billboards work well in Shenzhen, while buyers in Guangzhou prefer newspapers. Youthful Shenzhen is more open to new, up-and-coming brands, while Guangzhou folks tend to stick with tried-and-tested brands, McKinsey said.

深圳和广州这两个相邻城市的汽车消费者也表现出不同的消费行为。在广告方面，通过广告牌发布广告能在深圳取得不错的宣传效果，而广州买车人更爱看报纸广告。麦肯锡说，年轻的深圳对新品牌更加开放，而广州人往往固守久经考验的品牌。

Which all sounds like one marketing nightmare ahead for the auto makers and a windfall for advertising agencies, public relations firms -- and management consultants -- that are lining up to offer assistance.

在汽车厂商听来，这一切简直是营销恶梦，而在广告公司、公关公司和管理咨询公司看来，这却是求之不得的事，因为这给他们提供了帮助车企克服困难的机会。