VietNamNet Bridge – Unable to find customers for the last few consecutive months, local automobile manufacturers have launched a series of promotional programs to boost sales.

Assemling cars in Vidamco

Vidamco, the manufacturer of GM Daewoo and Chevrolet trademark models, has pioneered in launching promotional programs. Having realized that the two new models, Chevrolet Spark and Vivant, cannot create a ‘fever’ on the market as it happened with Capitva, the joint venture with the South Korean partner, has decided to launch a series of promotional programs.

In October, Vidamco reduced the sale prices by US $700-1,000 per unit for two models, the Chevrolet Vivant and the Captiva. However, the sales of both models did not increase as expected, but fell more sharply over the previous month. Only 104 Captivas were sold, a decrease of 83 units over the previous month. The sale of the Captiva was much lower than the sale of 185 units of the Zinger by Vinastar, which has just appeared on the market.

Some analysts have attributed the sharp fall to the fact that Vidamco has been focusing on assembling the diesel engine Captiva, which is expected to be marketed in November.

However, Vidamco has not become discouraged by the failure. It has announced a new promotional program from November 10-31 for all five of its models, offering the discount rates of up to US $1,700 per unit.

Earlier in November, the biggest automobile joint venture in Vietnam, Toyota Vietnam, announced the splendid promotional program, which allows giving buyers of the Camry and Altis models, the 3-year vehicle body insurance policy. The program is valid from October 20 – December 31, 2008. The manufacturer has also decided to cut the retail price by 20% for the car parts for the Altis, the Vios, and the Zace models.

Currently, though no official sale price cut has been announced, buyers still negotiate directly with salesmen at Toyota’s sales agents to get the discounts of several hundreds to several thousands dollars for each car.

For example, the Vios 1.5G has the quoted price at US $29,300/unit, but buyers can negotiate to get the price down to US $27,900/unit. The discounts of US $1,300-1,800/unit are being applied to the Vios and the Altis, and US$2,600 per unit for the Camry 2.4G.

Ford Vietnam has also kicked off the year-end promotional program for its products. The ‘5555’ program will be applied to the buyers of the Ford Focus (five years of warranty, 5 years of free maintenance, five years of on-road support and 5% of ownership registration tax). Meanwhile, the buyers of the Ford Transit would get a fuel voucher worth US $1,500.

Chinese Lifan, through its importer and distributor in Vietnam, Bao Toan Company, has launched a promotional program on supporting 50% of registration fee for both the 1.3L Lifan 520 and the 1.6L Lifan 520. The total value of the program is VND 4.995 million.

The splendid promotional programs hoped to warm up the automobile market after it became cold due to the high inflation rate.

(Source: VnMedia)