If any of us thought that the consuming middle classes of China and India were a million miles away from buying as much as their counterparts here in the west, think again. Mercedes Benz has reported its biggest rise in half-year sales on record, having sold 610,532 passenger vehicles in the first half of 2011. This equates to a 10% rise in sales compared to the previous six months. And most of that has come from emerging markets.
What is perhaps fairly surprising is that it isn’t the more affordable models – such as the Smart car – that are selling like hot cakes – it’s the big, luxurious, prestigious models. The notion of ‘keeping up with the Jonses’ in places like China and India seems to have got a lot more challenging over the last few years.
Certainly, there are plenty of opportunities for more affordable cars to make in-roads into markets like India and China (India’s Tata Motor company is selling plenty to those outside the Indian middle classes, for example), but it seems that if you’ve got money in these countries, you want to show it – and that means investing a high quality, prestigious cars that won’t cause you to call your vehicle recovery provider every second journey. And few brands capture this idea of prestige better than the Mercedes Benz.
Speaking about the news, Dr Joachim Schmidt, executive vice president of sales and marketing, commented: "The first half of the year went very well for Mercedes-Benz. We achieved double-digit growth increases in many markets, our products are in demand and we succeeded in setting a new record."
Sales in China rose by 50%, which is impressive in itself, but that other burgeoning economy, Russia, perhaps gives us more cause for astonishment – with a whopping 70% increase in sales. It’s hard to see these kind of figures ever occurring in Europe or the USA, but equally, one has to wonder how long such increases will be sustained in emerging economies too.
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