NAME: Björn Hauber
COMPANY: Mercedes-Benz China
JOB: General Manager, Sales & Marketing
EDUCATION: École Supérieure de Commerce, France; Universidad Argentina de la Empresa, Argentina, European Business School, Germany
IN HIS POCKET: Name card holder, home and car keys, mobile phone

The global economic crisis may have dampened enthusiasm for luxury cars in the West, but in China car sales, especially luxury models, have remained impressively strong. Mercedes-Benz China, one of the leaders in the Chinese luxury car market, saw its business grow by 50% in the first eight months of 2009. This year, the company introduced six new models to the marke ...

How long does the average Chinese own the car, and how quickly do they want to trade up?
If you look at the Chinese automotive market, it really picked up around 2005, so we expect a huge repurchasing cycle to start. I would expect that after four or five years people would then repurchase another car. But the difficulty is nobody can really tell today because nobody has the experience yet, so we all have to kind of sit and wait.