How do foreign auto suppliers need to compete differently in China market?

Abstract

The China auto market is surging as the most fascinating place for the global auto industry today. All major foreign auto OEMs have been aggressively expanding their business in China, and expecting most of their global sales growth to come from China in the next decade. Following the move of foreign OEMs, many foreign auto suppliers also entered the China market, either to serve their traditional OEM customers, or to look for new business opportunities. Among them, one of the global exhaust system suppliers is very interested in China and invited us to conduct a case study on their China operations. In this thesis, we analyzed the dynamics of China auto market and the challenges to foreign OEMs and suppliers. Being driven by the market's rapid growth, tough competition, increasing margin pressures, global pressure on low-cost country sourcing and the Chinese government regulations, foreign OEMs have been increasing their efforts on the localization of manufacturing and product development. We first examine the current strategic role of China operations for major foreign OEMs in China, and the current and future requirements from foreign and Chinese OEMs on auto suppliers in China.

(cont.) Then we analyzed the China exhaust system industry in detail using the Porter's Five Forces. After obtaining a good understanding of how a foreign exhaust system supplier needs to compete in China, the authors focused on the global exhaust system supplier under the study and investigated how it has been competing in China market, what have been done successfully, and what could be done differently. The root causes of the issues were identified and the suggestions to address some of them were presented. In the last section, we extend the findings and suggestions to other foreign auto suppliers in China.