Car buyers favour Chinese brands with UK footprint
New research has revealed that car buyers are far more likely to buy from a Chinese vehicle manufacturer if it has a factory in the UK.
According to April’s Startline Used Car Tracker, 41% of prospective car buyers think Chinese brands entering the UK market is a positive, with 31% saying they want to back companies that invest here and 26% agreeing Chinese brands selling in the UK should manufacturer here.
Paul Burgess, CEO at Startline Motor Finance, said: “There have been press reports that some Chinese manufacturers are considering opening factories in the UK and we wanted to see if investing in the local economy would make people view these brands more favourably.
“The answer is a resounding yes. Chinese car makers could emulate Japanese companies such as Nissan and Toyota that reaped long-term sales benefits after opening UK manufacturing facilities in the 1980s and 1990s.”
Meanwhile, only 10% of respondents said they wouldn’t buy a Chinese car wherever it was made and seven per cent considered Chinese companies in the UK a security risk.
Burgess added:
“These are very low figures. The UK market has historically been welcoming to cars from foreign manufacturers that offer a high degree of value and it appears this applies as much to Chinese manufacturers as the Japanese and Korean companies that came before them. Anyone can see this from the high number of Chinese cars already on UK roads.”
