中国乘用车行业转型期的新产品规划要素研究

Abstract

After nearly four decades of rapid growth, the Chinese passenger car market has entered a transitional development stage of low growth and high competition. Traditional product development theories (such as Brown & Eisenhardt's "rational planning school model") are mainly based on a relatively stable market environment, which is difficult to fully explain the differences in product performance in the Chinese passenger car market under strong policy intervention, rapid technological iteration and dynamic changes in consumer demand. Therefore, the core issue focused on in this study is: Research on product planning elements in the transition period of China's passenger car industry
The study adopts Eisenhardt's (1989) multi-case study method, combined with first-hand interview data (from senior product planners of passenger car companies) and second-hand industry data (policy documents, market reports, media reports), and ensures the research reliability and validity through data triangulation. The study selected representative product cases in the development history of China's passenger car market, covering different development stages of traditional fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles, to reveal the relationship between new product early planning elements and market performance.
The study found that in the transitional development stage of China's passenger car industry, the core factors affecting product market performance in the early planning include: industry policy orientation, target consumer group demand value insight and technology development direction. Furthermore, based on the time lens theory (Ancona et al., 2001) and the industry development cycle theory (Porter, 1980), it reveals how the interaction between policy and technology compresses the industry life cycle: driven by strong policies, the Chinese passenger car market completed the evolution of traditional fuel vehicle technology from introduction to maturity in only 30 years, which took nearly 100 years in the European and American markets; the life cycle of the new energy vehicle industry was quickly activated by policy incentives (such as subsidies) and constraints (such as the double-point policy), forming a new competitive track.
The study constructed a "new product development planning element model in a rapidly changing environment" and emphasized: the importance of future time perspective: companies need to proactively evaluate policy trends (such as carbon peak targets), technological development direction evolution (such as autonomous driving) and consumer demand value evolution (such as young user preferences, etc.). And the synergistic mechanism of policy-technology-demand: the early planning of new products needs to achieve dynamic matching of the three, etc.
The study expanded the product development theory and proposed a "policy-technology-demand" ternary driving model, which made up for the lack of explanation of traditional theories in dynamic markets. The introduction of the time lens theory reveals how policy intervention changes the rhythm of the industry life cycle and provides a new perspective for emerging market research.
The study provides extensive insights into the new product planning practices of Chinese passenger car companies during their transformation and development: for example, companies should establish a policy-sensitive product planning system, such as setting up a dedicated team to monitor policy changes (such as carbon emission regulations); and the selection of product technology routes needs to balance the policy development direction and the value of consumer group demand, and avoid excessive technology orientation.

Date of Award	6 Jun 2025
Original language	Chinese (Simplified)
Awarding Institution	China Europe International Business School
Supervisor	Yu Zhang (Supervisor) & Weiru Chen (Supervisor)