(Yicai Global) Nov. 14 -- Many Chinese car manufacturers have been actively participating in this year’s Double 11 online shopping bonanza, with all sorts of promotions on offer, in a bid to drive up sales after two sluggish months in September and October, which are normally peak season for auto purchases.

Great Wall Motor, for instance, offered CNY1 million (USD141,663) worth of subsidies through its livestream channel on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. For 10 days from Nov. 1, it handed out discounts of CNY10,000 (USD1,416) on popular car models, waived insurance payments and let customers who purchased a car enter a lucky draw, among other special offers.

The automaker managed to secure bookings for more than 40,000 vehicles during the e-shopping event, generating a turnover of over CNY2 billion (USD238.7 million), according to the Baoding, northern Hebei province-based firm.

Such was its success that by the evening of Nov. 10, senior executives of the carmaker’s five marques were gathering at the Douyin studio to promote their own products.

“E-commerce is becoming an important way for consumers to buy vehicles,” said Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the China Passenger Car Association. “A number of car purchase tax breaks and NEV subsidies are about to expire so this is spurring customers who originally intended to buy cars next year to purchase now.”

The foremost aim for carmakers taking part in the annual shopping festival is marketing, rather than the closing of deals, Lang Xuehong, deputy secretary-general of the China Automobile Dealers Association, told Yicai Global.

Automakers were rarely to be seen in the early days when e-commerce platforms started to launch big shopping galas. However, their promotional events in brick-and-mortar venues have not been as effective as in previous years because of the fallout from Covid-19 and so online marketing by vehicle manufacturers has started to become more prominent.

Chinese auto dealers’ inventories rose 6.5 percentage points last month from the year before and gained 3.8 percentage point from a month earlier to 59 percent, the China Automobile Dealers Association said. This is well above the benchmark of 50 on the ‘warning index for car dealer inventories.’

Editors: Tang Shihua, Kim Taylor