For the past eleven years, Lexus has been Numero Uno in U.S. luxury vehicle sales. Not so in China, where Germanic giants BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi lead the pack and Lexus is relegated to a paltry fourth.
One issue is customer service, or rather a level of customer service that fails to differentiate Lexus from its competitors. As business owner and Lexus customer Maggie Lin explains: “Nothing stands out from Lexus's service. I don't feel there's anything special compared with what Audi has been doing. They are more or less the same.”
It’s one of the reasons Lexus’s Chinese arm has sent two of its top managers to the United States to learn how things are done at the brand’s North American operation. According to J.D. Power, Lexus sold just a fifth of market leader Audi’s sales total for 2010. That’s just 49,000 vehicles to the latter’s 236,000. There’s also the issue of consumer tastes.