Our Projects
Digital luxury: Developing a China-specific infotainment strategy
The Opportunity
Infotainment has become a key differentiator in the automotive industry, influencing purchasing decisions and shaping the overall driving experience. Mercedes-Benz has a strong foundation in this space, offering a well-established system that combines intuitive operation with high-quality digital services. At the same time, the industry is evolving rapidly, with increasing customer expectations, new technological possibilities, and intensified competition. This is particularly relevant in China, a market known for its strong focus on advanced and seamlessly integrated digital experiences. To maintain our strong position and continue delivering best-in-class products, we must refine our digital offering, align with global software trends, and ensure that our infotainment strategy remains competitive in key markets.
The Approach
To develop a China-specific infotainment strategy, we built on a foundation of in-depth analysis, industry insights, and strategic collaboration:
- Comprehensive Market Understanding: We conducted a 360-degree analysis of market trends, customer expectations, and competitive offerings to map out the Chinese infotainment landscape.
- Benchmarking & Expert Insights: Through interviews with internal and external experts, we gained a detailed understanding of development processes and value propositions across the industry.
- Strategic Alignment: By organizing targeted workshops with key stakeholders, we defined a focused strategy that leverages Mercedes-Benz’s digital strengths while tailoring the experience to China’s unique market dynamics.
- Efficiency-Driven Execution: We refined collaboration models and development structures to ensure seamless global alignment, enhance efficiency, and foster innovation.
China is a strategically important market for us – not only because of its distinctive customer needs in intelligence that we aim to serve with our leading products, but also due to its dynamic tech ecosystem, which offers valuable opportunities to enhance our global R&D footprint. With a hybrid team of local experts in China and global colleagues from Germany, we are able to combine deep local insight with global synergy. This close collaboration has made the project both highly effective and truly rewarding for everyone involved.
Jie Cheng
Partner, Mercedes-Benz Management Consulting China
The Impact
With this project, we refined our infotainment strategy to address market-specific needs while strengthening Mercedes-Benz’s position in an evolving digital landscape. By identifying key customer needs and market trends, we sharpened the focus of our digital feature portfolio and defined a structured approach for future infotainment development. By enhancing collaboration between global research and development hubs, we streamlined development processes and ensured an even stronger alignment of our infotainment strategies with market demands. Additionally, by integrating insights on software and architecture trends, we created a foundation for future technology decisions that will support long-term competitiveness.