Avis Europe’s Chinese center network in China is comprised of 26 locations, co-owned together with a local partner, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation. The joint-business plans to increase the number of car rental locations to 100 by 2012.
Avis has an estimated market share of 46 percent on the Chinese market, the company’s Finance Director told Bloomberg. He also added that the country’s car-hiring market currently offers a microscopic overall volume.
“We’re particularly driving China. We’re putting more in the bigger cities, and we’re also going into the next size of cities, going further out as well,” Smith was quoted as saying by the aforementioned source.
Avis is based in Bracknell, UK and is the second largest car rental company in Europe, following Europcar. The company’s 2009 sales saw a 16 percent decrease, only managing to total $1.9 billion. 99 percent of the company’s sales come from European markets. Avis’s current annual sales in China only reached $20 million.
The company has developed an expansion plan for its business. This states that Avis should use the emerging markets’ potential for two reasons. First of all, because the car rental markets in those countries are still virgin and secondly because their economies are predicted to grow more than the ones in Europe.
By looking for new expansion opportunities, the company just seems to be following its motto: "We try harder".
Google News