Emotion © Joe Shlabotnik
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 already many concepts related to the proximity (a job place, some events, a meeting, a museum, a doctor ect) have given way to the concept of ‘remote’.
The most important proximity today is our mobile device. In fact you can choose, you can decide, you can match, you can realize, you can shopping, you can socialize, you can see the interlocutor, you can listen to his voice.
For these reasons, here you are the car without the radio, the navigator able to integrate our mobile devices with our favorite applications, link between the two companies contiguous (the industrial and information one’s) and expression of the car post-industrial.
What needs to worry about is the fact that both car and motorcycle are becoming less able to generate satisfaction and emotions using them. Then if we add to this the costs of holding and use, the sudden loss of value that require quotes, the speed limits increasingly stringent, the average speed of the movements always lower, the scenario is not encouraging. The alternative means of transport have, moreover, on the middle distances, many advantages compared to cars.
The market, beyond the numbers, is telling us exactly that.
So, the dynamics we have to analyze are related to the evolution of society and not only to industry. Fight against the trivialization is what is required of the marketing manager. The desire to possess car is today limited to a type of consumer, who combines passion, good technical knowledge, good availability of economic resources: too few to ensure the sustainability of an important sector of the economy.
For most of the others, car means “spending” and motion means “expensive whim”, two perceptions too much distant from the feeling that animated the consumer 80′s.
The automotive industry will follow the evolution of society: polarization of demand among car considered trivial in content for which reliability and low cost of operation and maintenance will be critical (that’s why experiments with Chinese cars have taken away) and car privilege of a small group of consumers spenders. Then there are the cars “because I need” offered for rent.
To animate this kind of development there will be the need to stress the productive mechanism of sharing and adaptation platforms in search of further economies of scale with opening as many markets as possible and the ability to offer exclusive products to a few, maybe hyper customizable with production to order.
The rest will be work on design, brand and relationship, the only distinctive characters in the universe of standardization. And it is on these aspects that Italians are always able to have our say through the development of our talents.
In that market there will be less space for the traditional distribution intermediaries but more and more opportunities for those who can structure specific peculiarities in services sales and post-sales especially being able to excite and to go beyond the tangible.
And what is happening today? It’s not true, even if you spend fifty thousand euro for the purchase.
Nobody is willing to consider this an option, but how many people understand it?
