United Kingdom (UK) is the country that includes Great Britain and island of Ireland. It is still ruled by monarchist Queen Elizabeth II and has been among the developed countries. It is the first industrialized country and has been in power for long as an economically stable, culturally rich and politically influential.
The Basic Thought
So when the used car industry was in the growing phase, many antagonists thought that Europe and specifically UK will be the least favorable market. It is because the average purchasing power is high that many believed it will be a useless option for a country that can easily buy first hand cars.
It was also the perception of masses that second hand cars are inferior in quality having cheap price but high maintenance cost. So second hand car will be giving a lot of trouble, to the society where the time is the most precious commodity. If we analyze society of UK we will realize that people consider transportation a necessity rather than luxury, so selling of car that cause trouble will never be able to get strong grounds.
Perception Betterment
To counter the perception, the second hand car market giants like SBT JAPAN worked on quality. They started working on buying cars from Japan and other markets that were best in condition. This was also kept in mind that quality was never compromised during the process. For that experts were hired and strategies were made so the best could be done to build better image.
The Role of Japanese Used Cars
The reason that Japan got greater market share in UK, is because of the economic policy combined with the minimal profit margin by big shot companies. Talking about economy, Japan government always supported export of used cars from the country. This was done to support the domestic automobile manufacturing market.
To make the exporters better off, the following steps worked wonder. Initially, it is about the re-registration fee that an average resident needs to give after two years. The Masho fee multiplies with each growing year, so instead of registering the car again, mostly people go for new car. Even the new car is available to them at low price, so they sell cars in auction before 2 years.
This lead to multiple vehicles availability in diverse auction houses across Japan. Every day hundreds of cars get auctioned and big short exporters buy it at cheap price. Then the other advantage an exporter get is the recycling fee it gets when car leaves border. This is the fee given by government on each vehicle, hence the dealer can sell car at cheap price to its customer.
The advent of internet has further made accessibility to these exporters easy. You get car near you, without hassle and the best part is quality option is made available at price that is sometimes even less than a half the original brand new vehicle purchase price.
The UK market, though a mature one in terms of cash availability, but still go for these cars. Because at the end of the day if you get best deal in low price, no matter how much cash you have you will go for the cheap one.
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