Jaguar Land Rover zooms into China's fast lane with Customer First Strategy

The Range Rover Velar will hit the market on Sept 2 in Beijing. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Jaguar Land Rover is continuing to accelerate into the fast line in China with its long-standing Customer First strategy, which the British premium carmaker believes is pivotal to its successful and sustainable development there.

Frank Wittemann, president of Jaguar Land Rover Integrated Marketing Sales and Service. [Photo provided to China Daily]

From January to July, Jaguar Land Rover delivered 78,739 cars in the Chinese mainland, its largest single market, achieving 27 percent year-on-year growth, much faster than the industry average.

July also marked another achievement: the 19th month of year-on-year growth in a row.

"Our consecutive growth over the last 19 months demonstrates how successful our efforts have been to deepen our roots in China," said Frank Wittemann, president of Jaguar Land Rover Integrated Marketing Sales and Service in China.

"We are driving forward in a good way, and we want to continue this growth in a healthy and sustainable fashion."

One of Jaguar Land Rover's efforts is to enrich its portfolio to meet the growing and diverse demands of its Chinese customers.

The Range Rover Velar, which will hit the market in early September in Beijing, is one example. Filling in the gap between Range Rover Evoque and Range Rover Sport, the brand new model is appealing to many people at the Chengdu Motor Show, with its beautiful design and outstanding performance.

"Interest in the Velar is high around the world, so our concern is to get enough production capacity in order to satisfy our customers in China," Wittemann added. Wittemann said the automaker is localizing its compact Jaguar E-PACE SUV in China in 2018 and another model put into local production is to follow soon for people with different needs. Besides its enriched lineup of models, Jaguar Land Rover has built a new engine plant in China, which the automaker believes will enable it to better respond to local market demands.

Hu Jun, deputy president of Jaguar Land Rover Integrated Marketing Sales and Service. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The state-of-the-art facility, Jaguar Land Rover's first overseas engine plant, has both machining and assembly halls to manufacture the new Ingenium engine, the most advanced one the automaker has ever produced.

The engine will be placed in all future Chery Jaguar Land Rover products, placing them at the forefront of the automaker's future development.

"We believe the primary goal of our localization is to give faster responses to market, and we are confident in our new engine, which will prove to be the engine of Jaguar Land Rover's development," said Hu Jun, deputy president of Jaguar Land Rover Integrated Marketing Sales and Service in China.

The automaker is optimizing its sales network based on its successful Customer First philosophy. "For us, the extension of our dealership network over the next years is focused on customer convenience," Wittemann said.

"We now cover most major cities, so we are now setting up more dealerships in smaller regions, like tier-3, 4 and 5 cities, where we are not present, but mainly because of customer convenience."

Hu said Jaguar Land Rover will ensure the Customer First philosophy sits at the very core of its business.

"We will continue to do everything in our power to innovate and deliver outstanding products and services that meet our consumers' unique needs and requirements."