IAA Has Web Site in Mandarin, Chinese Might Offset Allstate Loss, car haulers, cars move, car carriers

Here’s an interesting note on the international nature of the used car market; we’re now seeing a major used car auctioneer having its web-site done with a Chinese option. Since 30% of Insurance Auto Auctions’ cars move overseas already, having Chinese as an option opens things up to over a billion customers, including Singapore, Taiwan and a large minority in Malaysia. There must be a voice aspect to the web site, since it mentioned that it is Mandarin Chinese; the dialects of Chinese are written the same but pronounced differently.

Interestingly, the IAA site has Polish and Russian options. Poland is a major market for used cars from elsewhere, as was Russia before they slapped on tariffs on imported cars last year. The new Chinese page might be a way of offsetting the loss of the Russian market. Japanese isn’t one of their languages, since the Japanese are generally net exporters of used cars; the Russians, especially those on the Siberian Pacific coast, were big markets for second-hand Japanese cars.

This will mean that car haulers will be pointing west more often coming out of IAA auctions; this will give the car carriers bringing imports in from Asia vehicles to take back with them. It might not be enough to fill up things, but a partial load beats no loads at all for shippers.

Since IAA just lost the account to sell Allstate’s salvage cars, they’re likely looking to increase demand in order to get some of that lost market share back, and catering to the Chinese diaspora as well as folks in China proper is one way to do so.

Source: http://www.auto-mobi.info/index.php?option...16991&Itemid=50