Marketing Case Analysis: The Ford Fiesta

Marketing Case Analysis: The Ford Fiesta

Summary

The Ford Motor Company launched new promotion program for Fiesta model to capture B segment market. The program targeted young generation and used SNS, making buzz online to expand recognition of the new car. However, the company is not sure whether the promotion scheme was effective enough to lead to actual purchase of the car and the key measures were reflecting the effectiveness in accurate way. Overall, Ford’s promotion strategy was novel and successfully captured initial attention. But online buzz should have been used as an advertising source to capture critical mass of new customers, which can help easily take away the image of truck maker and penetrate B segment in fast pace. In terms of measurement of success, number of test drive should have been the first priority, other measures such as number of unique visitors of web site and exceeding benchmark being stepping stones to achieve more practical measure. Limited number of test drive was the most important mistake they made in designing promotion strategy.

Company

The Ford Motor Company was one of the largest car manufacturers with famous brands of Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury. In 2009, the company occupied substantial market share of 16.7% and was the only US automaker survived from 2008 global economic downturn. However, the total number of sales in 2009(1,620,888) is less than the half of the one in 2000(4,202,820) as the economic crisis impact was huge and Japanese and European automakers constantly have taken US market.

Ford is famous for its line of SUV, classic sports car, and especially rugged truck category, which has been the best-selling vehicle for 33 years.

Competition

The company’s direct competitors in auto industry are Japanese and European automakers. Especially in B Segment, the entry level car segment, Japanese makers have been the market dominant players for a long time. Toyota and Honda have already had strong presence in subcompact car category for three decades and Nissan recently joined the trend. While Ford has strong competitive edge in mid-sized or bigger car category, there has been no way for Fords compete with those Japanese players in subcompact category. Rather, the company’s subcompact car was known for its poor quality.

The general competitor may include public transportation and bicycle which cost little or noon as we consider that major B segment customers are young people. Motorbike can be another strong competitor in that it offers joy ride and cool style for young generations with affordable price in general. Outdoor leisure trend is an abstract competitor because customers will want bigger space to fit their activity gears such as surfing/snow boards, scuba diving equipments,