Chinese electric car company Nio is envied by all other car companies as a model for being good at user operations. Its local counterparts are trying to learn how to acquire loyal customers, and now one of them has come up with a very innovative approach.
IM Motors, the premium car brand created by SAIC in partnership with Shanghai's Pudong New District and Alibaba, Tuesday unveiled details of its user operation program, which combines initial coin offering (ICO), cryptocurrency mining, and user relationship maintenance.
The company calls the program the CSOP (Customer Share Option Plan), in which it puts up 4.9 percent of the equity proceeds from its founding round of RMB 10 billion investment as backing for the issuance of 300 million digital tokens known as "Original Stones".
These digital tokens map the asset returns and dividends corresponding to this equity, and users can participate in the mining of these digital tokens in a variety of ways and use them to pay for services or products in the future.
IM Motors allows users to get these digital tokens in two ways.
In the first way, the more miles a user drives, the more of these digital tokens he or she can earn.
Users can authorize the company to access "vehicle and driving behavior data" to obtain these digital tokens, which account for 70% of the total number issued.
The issuance of these tokens is reduced by half every four years, although the company did not disclose the number of initial issuances.
This means that users are in mining mode from the moment they drive the brand's cars.
During the use of the vehicle, the "Original Stones" will fall at a random rate, based on blockchain technology.
The remaining 30 percent of the digital tokens will be distributed through user participation in the company's interactive activities.
The company said that the total number of "Original Stones" to be placed is fixed at 300 million, and no additional ones will be issued.
Predictably, in the early years of the CSOP's user data entitlement program, the chances of receiving the tokens will be higher when the number of the "Original Stones" is high and the number of users is low.
Prior to this program, there was no precedent in the global automotive industry for using blockchain technology to determine the value of user data.
It is difficult to judge how effective this operational scheme, which incorporates cryptocurrency mining, will be, but if it is initially successful, more car companies will undoubtedly copy it and introduce blockchain technology into their own user management.
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