teachthe4ps.com - For instructors of marketing.

Few people will buy a new car unless they have a test drive.  So obviously an important marketing objective for an auto retailer is to get customers inside their cars for a drive.  Let’ say you have a newly designed vehicle — but most of the new design went on the inside and not on the outside.

Such was the case for the Nissan Patrol — a large SUV model sold in the middle east.  When potential customers see the Patrol driving down the road, attention and interest are not peaked.  There is no “Wow, that SUV looks sharp, I am going to have to check it out.”  That was the problem facing Arabian Automobiles – the exclusive Nissan distributor in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.  Arabian liked what Nissan had done with the Patrol — there were a lot of upgrades on the inside.  So how can they get people to get into and test drive the new SUV?  Who do you target?

Check out the clever campaign.  It might be fun to put together a slide that outlines the basic issues facing Arabian Motors.  You could ask students how the path to purchase worked – making sure they realized the importance of the test drive.  Then talk about the new Nissan Patrol — a Google image search will quickly find you a photo to add to your slides.  Ask students how you move customers along the path to purchase.  Then show the video.  Great to use with consumer behavior or promotion.

China represents a huge potential market for all kinds of companies — vehicle sales in China grew more than 32% in 2010 to more than 18.1 million (more than in the U.S.).   As the average Chinese gains more disposable income, many are in the market for a new car.  At the low end of the market — less than 50,000 yuan (about $7500) — three out of four cars sold are domestic Chinese brands.  These brands — like the Tianjin FAW Xiali pictured here — don’t have a great reputation for quality.   Volkswagen, GM, Nissan, and Honda see an opportunity and are responding with lity with lower cost models.  So this is what many of these car makers are trying to do with stripped down variations of traditional models — with new brand names. This article “Foreign Carmakers Try Brands Just for China“  (Bloomberg BusinessWeek, March 3, 2011) provides a good example of international product adaptation.   The decision to use new brand names — instead of the more well-known Western brand names could also be discussed.

This article presents some of the interesting challenges marketers and advertising agencies will have with the new electric cars coming out over the next few years (“Selling the Electric Car,” Adweek, October 5, 2009).  My students are showing more interest in sustainability and green products.

“Brandweek’s Grand Marketer of the Year ’09: Joel Ewanick of Hyundai” Brandweek, September 14, 2009.   This is a great package of story, audio, and video content.  The article describes how Hyundai came to understand that customers weren’t buying new cars because they feared losing their jobs.  So Hyundai promised consumers that they could return the car if that happened.  Below you can see the television commercial Hyundai used on the Super Bowl to launch the program. The program resonated with consumers and spurred sales.