12 Oct 2015

Malaysia is top market for luxury car brands in South East Asia

updated: 15/10/2015; 13/10/2015

The biggest car market in ASEAN is Indonesia (sales of 830096 units in 2014) followed by Thailand (with 579273 units sold) and Malaysia (444551 units sold) (ASEAN automative federation, 2014).

However, when it comes to luxury car brands, my research shows that Malaysia is the leading country in ASEAN.

For example, take the BMW group. 2014 was a fantastic year for them with record breaking sales through out the World (including the 3 countries listed above) with 2,117,965 BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce vehicles sold. Let us compare the sales in these 3 countries:

1. Indonesia: 9,046 vehicles, comprising 7,808 BMWs, 655 MINIs and 583 BMW Motorrads
2. Thailand; 8,386 vehicles of both BMW and MINI brands
3. Malaysia: 9,419 vehicles with monthly sales upwards of 900 units.

Mercedes-Benz, which is the leading premium car brand in all the three countries also shows a similar trend.

Mercedes-Benz Thailand sold more vehicles with 11,524 units sold as compared to Malaysia (a record-breaking 9,419 vehicles) in 2014. In the first five months of this year, Mercedes-Benz Thailand took the lead in the premium car segment in the country with sales record of 4108 units. However, Mercedes-Benz Malaysia recorded their all-time sales record in the first quarter of 2015 with 5163 units passenger cars sold. This is also higher than in Indonesia which saw sales of 1800 cars between January and July 2015.

Though I cannot generalise based on sales figures of only two luxury car makers, preliminary results from other luxury companies also show that Malaysia is one of the top markets for their cars as well in the ASEAN region.

This thus leads to some interesting questions. Besides population and income, what do marketers also need to take into account when it comes to luxury products?

Sources:
  • http://www.bmw.co.th/th/en/general/bmwinsight/news_read.php?id=565&year=
  • https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/asia/pressDetail.html?title=bmw-group-indonesia-reports-significant-growth-in-volume-in-2013&outputChannelId=16&id=T0166566EN&left_menu_item=node__4100
  • http://paultan.org/2015/01/14/mercedes-benz-malaysia-record-sales-2014/
  • http://paultan.org/2015/06/03/mercedes-benz-malaysia-best-ever-sales-in-may-15/
  • http://www.mercedes-benz.com.my/content/media_library/malaysia/media_library/About_Us/events___sponsorship/2015_Events/pr-1st-half-sales-pdf.object-Single-MEDIA.tmp/MBM1H2015NewsRelease7Jul15.pdf

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