Katai Builds a New Ecology of Second-hand Car Trading Services with the Launch of Interactive Shopping Mall and the Landing of Digital Factories
Jul 23, 2024What is most important for second-hand car businesses? Undoubtedly, it's integrity!
In countries such as the United States, Japan, and South Korea, leading second-hand car companies provide consumers with inspection certificates that can be used as evidence in the future, and have achieved national joint guarantees for second-hand cars, solving the problem of integrity. As a result, the second-hand car market is thriving. Due to transparent car conditions and after-sales guarantees, the transaction volume of second-hand cars in the United States has long been three times the sales volume of new cars. In contrast, in China, surveys show that 80% of users do not trust the second-hand car industry, and therefore hesitate to buy second-hand cars. The issue of trust is the biggest pain point on the demand side of second-hand cars.
Integrity is the foundation of the second-hand car business
"Haier hopes to replicate the sincere service system accumulated in the home appliance industry to the second-hand car industry," said Liu Che, a member of the board of directors of Haier Group and chairman of Katai. "Integrity is the foundation of our business. We will use the industrial internet capabilities of Katai to find the most suitable car for users, and through the full process of service, let consumers buy with confidence and use with peace of mind."
To build a solid foundation of integrity, Katai has taken three steps. First, find partners who conform to Katai's concept of integrity. Second, establish three transparency standards: car condition transparency, price transparency, and service transparency. Third, use the capabilities of the industrial internet to ensure the implementation of the entire process standards.
On July 18, at the live ceremony of the Katai intelligent interactive shopping mall, Liu Che introduced the specific practices of Katai's three-step approach to reporters.
In 1985, Zhang Ruimin, the founder of Haier Group, smashed 76 refrigerators with quality problems, injecting the word "sincerity" into the soul of Haier, and forging Haier's spirit of pursuing excellence. Later, he took Haier out of the country and into the world through management innovation and business expansion.
In 2021, a similar scene occurred in the second-hand car industry. Wang Guobao, vice president of Katai and general manager of Katai MeiChi, smashed a Mercedes-Benz water-soaked car that was accidentally purchased in front of many peers and consumers. In his view, he would rather compensate 300,000 yuan than let this Mercedes-Benz go on the shelf and be sold to customers. Doing so is to alert employees to do a good job in testing and evaluation in the future. Second, to make customers feel at ease about the brand. Third, he hopes to awaken the industry's awareness of quality.
In 2022, by chance, Wang Guobao met Katai, and soon after, Wang Guobao led the MeiChi team to join in 2022, based on the common concept of integrity between the two parties.
Wang Guobao said frankly: "Katai entering the second-hand car industry can empower the industry through standardized and technological means, helping us to implement the concept of integrity more firmly. The second-hand car industry needs the leadership of leading enterprises. Second-hand car companies do not produce cars, our only product is integrity."
"Based on the common concept of integrity, Katai has cooperated with car merchants across the country, and now has laid out more than 40 high-end second-hand car direct sales stores, gathering more than 100 global car brand models."
Three Transparency + AI Interaction to Improve Customer Experience
Since its establishment in 2022, Katai has achieved standardization of the entire process, realizing the standardization of second-hand car transactions, the essence of which is to achieve "three transparency."
Katai's "one car, one code" uses digital standard certification to achieve the visualization and traceability of the entire process of car condition detection, preparation, and quality inspection, eliminating "three non" problem vehicles such as fire cars, water-soaked cars, and major accident cars from the source, thereby achieving car condition transparency.
Katai adopts a "fixed price" sales model, and the standard charge for the preparation and renewal service is open and transparent, ensuring that consumers can buy their favorite car at the most reasonable price, thereby achieving price transparency.
Katai is the first in the industry to propose the "three guarantees" service standard for national joint guarantees, and has obtained the first five-star service certification certificate in the second-hand car industry from the China Quality Certification Center (CQC). It has a credit ecological service network covering more than 100 cities across the country, achieving service transparency.
On this basis, Katai released the industry's first user integrity standard system, clarifying the "five major service commitments": nine major categories of car condition detection; "three non" vehicles 90-day repurchase guarantee; 30-day whole car warranty; 1-year 20,000 kilometers three major system quality guarantee; three guarantees service, national joint guarantee. With "integrity" and "standard" as the core, Katai is committed to enhancing consumers' confidence in the second-hand car industry and stimulating the vitality of second-hand car market consumption.
With the support of the standardized system, Katai not only provides consumers with clear and transparent car purchase guarantees but also improves its own service quality and operational efficiency. The establishment of this system marks an important step for the second-hand car industry towards standardization and standardization. Katai has created the country's first self-operated second-hand car mall, high-end second-hand car offline direct sales stores, online intelligent interactive shopping malls, and a unified national credit ecological service network, forming a "three-network integration" high-end second-hand car direct sales chain network, breaking regional limitations, and achieving "buying and selling nationwide" for second-hand cars.
At the live ceremony of the Katai intelligent interactive shopping mall, Liu Zhenyu, General Manager of Volcano Engine's Large Consumer Solution, demonstrated the scene of Katai shopping mall interacting with users through AI technology: Enter the shopping mall AI interactive interface, and voice out "can take into account going to work and off work, suitable for a family of 6 short-distance travel, with a powerful engine and rich entertainment system" and other needs, the AI interactive interface will give multiple brand and model recommendations within one second. Cars are large consumer goods, and consumers need a long decision-making time. Whether it is the user's needs changing many times, or there is no search action, only leaving comments and barrages, Katai's intelligent interactive AI can capture and predict user needs, and match the most suitable model for him.
He said that the user's physical wallet determines whether they can buy, and the psychological wallet determines whether they want to buy. Consumers first pursue cost-effectiveness, but they are also afraid of falling into traps and being troublesome. Katai's intelligent interactive shopping mall can solve the above problems. With the development of Internet technology, online shopping malls have generally gone through three stages of search, recommendation, and interaction, and interactive technology can match customer needs more accurately.
Digital Remanufacturing Factory Provides Strong Support
Achieving transparency in car conditions is easier said than done. At present, in the second-hand car industry, the detection of vehicles still mainly relies on the experience of appraisers. Under this model, on the one hand, it is difficult to scale vehicle detection, and on the other hand, if there is a slight oversight in the detection process, it is easy to make mistakes.
To solve the above problems, after half a year of equipment development and process optimization, on July 18, Katai's "remanufacturing" digital factory was officially put into production. Through the industrial Internet platform + "one car, one code" application, it achieves visualization and traceability of quality, materials, services, and vehicles, becoming a new paradigm for the industry's digital transformation and high-quality development