Surprise! The consumers prefer self driving cars!
Cisco Systems (www.cisco.com) has interviewed 1,500 people and found that half of them buy cars based on the “technologic reputation” of the brand.
An interesting result as much as the other findings of the study, such as the increasing “digitization” of the buying process.
First things first, starting from the sample used for research: they surveyed 1,511 people in 10 different...
Il Quadrifoglio: the greatest CRM of Alfa Romeo
Today everyone well knows the importance of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for any company in the market: a regular follow-up with all types of customers is crucial to target, acquire, retain, and understand prospective and sold Customers.
But in the 60’s this was not the model nor the standard, and CRM was pratically unknown for carmakers and dealers (… but even today…).
The...
Interview with Pietro Gorlier, President and CEO – Mopar® – 2^nd part
…from the first part!
May I ask a more generic question? What professional differences are there, for a person in your position, between working in Turin and working in Detroit?
Both Turin and Detroit have a strong, proud automotive heritage. While both have gone through tough times, both continue to maintain a vivid passion for cars. From a professional standpoint, I feel at home in both places.
When...
Interview with Pietro Gorlier, President and CEO – Mopar® – 1^st part
Date of the interview: March, 26 2013
Professional Profile: Pietro Gorlier was born in Turin (Italy), he joined the Fiat Group in 1989 as a market analyst in Iveco helding various positions in logistics, in the After Sales and Customer Care, before joining Fiat Group Automobiles in 2006.
After the experience in FGA and in CNH Global N.V., he joined Chrysler Group. He is President and CEO of MOPAR®...
CRM: the “Waterloo” of the dealers
2012 has been succesfull for carmakers: they all made money selling cars!
GM is back # 1 in the world, followed by Toyota and Ford.
Ferrari had the best result of 66 years of history.
Martin Winkertorn celebrated the records in sales and profits at VW Group with a personal superbonus of 14,000,000.
Fiat-Chrysler sold 4.209 million cars, with a net profit of 1.4 billion. In January 2013 has further...
Interview with Paolo Gagliardo, Head of Brand Lancia/Chrysler for EMEA – 2^nd part
…the first part!
GLOBALISATION! This term should allow you to achieve a product that is in line with the tastes of the “entire world”, with the underlying principle of listening to your customers. Are Lancia and Chrysler getting to grips with this term? Do they listen to the large mass of customers who are trying to convey their expectations? If not, what’s missing and what...
Mercedes-Benz and the ‘OM651 case’
Some carmakers invest millions in order to measure and increase Customer Satisfaction.
Today the manufacturers must be able to measure themselves “1-2-1” with their Customers, with transparency: thanks to the web any single Client could become a powerful promoter or a devastating detractor.
This is one of the reasons why carmakers should be ready to confront themselves with the Social...
Car is… Feminine
This year in Italy – in the middle of the worst car market since the 70’s – nearly 600,000 new cars will be personally purchased by Women; and Women will also influence the decision to purchase an additional 250,000 cars, used by Italian families.
Every day on the streets of the “Bel Paese”, millions of women are driving and dealing with the maintenance of their 13,400,000...
Where shall we go?
I belong to a relatively new generation, too much committed to principles and values typical of the previous generation and I consider myself quite prone to decode the behavior of the next generation.
Today society evolves towards integration of communication tools and information and this will make it less necessary to move to cultivate relationships. Let’s look at today and let us realize how...
What Dealers can learn from JFK?
As well as fishing in Italy is miserably in bankruptcy due to a wrong management of the sea – which allowed exploitation of resources beyond the limit – so now someone would like to follow the same exploitation of the “vast automotive’s sea” by continuing to preserve entire species of fishermen thanks to artifices such as bonus, contributions and Government incentives.
The...
Failures and lotto draw…
Electronics has started being used predominantly in the automotive field and its major development has been realized in this sector in the last couple of years.
At the beginning of the automotive history the major improvements were obtained by a hard work on the propellers by increasing the compression ratio together with the fuels but the greatest development took place when the ECU and its microprocessors...
Mercedes target change
The new Mercedes B class television ad, in my opinion, signals a significant communication strategy change that already started with the ads for the E class.
Mercedes sales results in Italy are definitely the worst among the three large German manufacturers.
One of the reasons is definitely a lack of attention to the customer, as written by Maurizio Sala in his article (link), but a large part of the...
When scale economy compromises quality
Using the same parts for different models of cars, and for different brands in the case of auto groups, is definitely an intelligent solution for cost containment and the allocation of fixed costs on a larger number of vehicles, besides the reduction of merchandise in stock by adopting a just in time production system.
But sometimes this industrial logic was adopted too hastily and without a careful...
World Shopper Conference 2012
I am very proud that Ricardo Olivera, from Lisboa, has selected Automotive Space to advert his World Shopper Conference. You can see the banner created for WCS2012.
Click on the header to subscribe, or on this link.
Below, there are some words written by Ricardo exclusively for Automotive Space’s readers:
“Since 2009, I lead a unique and global project to improve car business...
Memorable Experience
Today we live in an era in which we are bombarded with a wealth of information. Today more than ever it is important to sell not only automobiles but also experiences.
Automobile companies invest millions of euros in advertising, spokespersons and events. It has almost become a habit for many brands to be open on Sunday, dictated by the company, which is costly for the dealer.
On the other hand, few...
The ‘revolution’ of Mercedes Benz
The new Mercedes-Benz platform – CarTogether – which promotes car sharing to reduce emissions and traffic, promised to be a revolution.
What we lacked was that the German firm – rather than promoting his products or the image of the brand – it is more precisely using the image of the revolutionary par excellence: ‘Che’ Guevara, with the M-B symbol on his beret,...
Hybrid Ideas …
Hybrid Ideas …
If automotive experts would stop saying stupid things about more or less electric vehicles, the world would be a better place.
There is a whole variegated bunch of stupidities out there. Some are functional to elegant and content deprived ads and commercials. Well, to be honest, in this case we are dealing with plain lies. Others are technologically flavoured, sound highly innovative,...
The Economics of Deadly Cars
You would think that in our modern society where as consumers we have some of the best legal protection and recourse in history, that OEM’s would think twice about either launching (or continuing a product) with known defects that could lead to serious injury or even death.
OEM’s spend vast fortunes on developing vehicles to comply with various safety testing requirements such as Euro NCAP and...
The Emperor Has No Clothes!
The way the OEM’s operate their franchises leaves a lot to debate about. Having worked for both OEM’s and retail outlets, I have formed some strong opinions about how the OEM’s are conducting themselves of late.
The relationship between the two used to be relatively simple: the manufacture designed and built cars and the retailer sold and serviced them.
The control that the OEM had over an individual...
Choose your customers carefully!
One of my favourite characters is Bill Cosby, not only because he is a legendary comic, but because he is also a serious academic in his own right. He once stated (paraphrasing) “I’m not too sure what the key to success is, but I’m convinced that the key to failure is trying to be all things to all people”.
Too much of something can kill you – even water. Everything should be done in moderation...
