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Taken away the incentive
Demand for budget VAZs is one of the indicators of financial confidence of the most popular group of buyers. Not only for the automobile, but also for the country's consumer market as a whole. And the demand is this: after last year's soaring vector of sales of new Togliatti cars, the current schedule shows a 15 percent decline.
However, we compare not only the current and last year figures, but also the conditions. In early 2011, a serious incentive was still working - the state program for recycling old cars. 80% of cars purchased with a recycling premium are VAZ cars. Now the incentive has been canceled, and VAZ is not able to compete with its own indicator a year ago.
But one cannot say “failed” about his current sales - they have reached the level of natural dynamics. True, according to experts, the enterprise will reach last year's indicator only at the end of the year.
Promotion game
Why did the turnover of used cars jump quite sharply, by 21%? Moreover, in more than a third of cases (34.5%), were VAZs again the object of sale?
“This sector of the market lives according to its own laws,” commented Sergey Tselikov, head of the Avtostat agency, for readers behind the wheel of the Russian Federation. - Let's take into account that in the country for all the years of production 13 million Zhiguli and Lad are sold, they make up about 40% of the total fleet of the Russian Federation. These long-lived machines pass from hand to hand 3-4 times. That is, even now they remain the most popular goods in the secondary market: “sevens” resold 45.4 thousand units, Lada-2110 - 43 thousand. Hence, an indicator of their share in secondary sales.
The leaders in the sector of new foreign cars: Toyota Corolla - 26.4 thousand, Ford Focus - 22.6 thousand, Volkswagen Passat - 15.2 thousand.
Saturation state
The fact that the car market of the country has no signs of collapse seems to be convinced by the statistics of the Association of European Businesses: the total sales of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles in January-March 2012 increased by 19% to 614.3 thousand units. But we must remember that last year over the same period, sales grew by about 40% - twice as much as now.
“Let's compare differently,” suggested Sergey Tselikov. - In the German car market, the most stable of the European ones, positive dynamics of about 5% (maximum 10%) is considered normal. We will take these numbers as a reference point. In comparison with them, the indicator we have achieved is very good. Another thing is that the Russian market is approaching a state of saturation, and sales growth dynamics will inevitably fall.
When, according to your forecasts, will saturation occur?
“I suppose this summer, and then sales growth is unlikely to be more than a few percent.”
