Market analysis and targeting strategy for the Volvo S60

MARKETING PROCEDURES FOR VOLVO'S S60 MODEL

Market Analysis for the Volvo S60

Market Analysis for the Volvo S60

Company profile

Volvo, a Swedish-based car production company, stands out as the leading manufacturer of premium cars. The company produces luxury cars with the vision to provide to the world the most luxurious desired automobile. The company's mission entails providing the world's most exciting and safest cars for the modern families. By extension company seeks to increase shareholders values.

Strengths

Good heritage

Firm trust in their brands

Accredited environmentally friendly production process and use

High regard for safety

Quality Customizations

Good relations with the customer that achieves development of products related to customer preferences

Weaknesses

The company following a change of guard seems to have confusion with identifying itself in the market

The products under the company logo appear costly compared other products in the market

Limited market shares and penetration

Strict to their production standards and position this makes the company's product seem as rigid to the trends in the market.

Opportunities

The current trends in the market for luxurious cars presents an opportunity for the company to capture customers' interests and expand their market share through product customization

Volvo is a company that has put in place the concerns for the environment forehand. This allows them an opportunity to impact positively on the global trend of environmentally safe products.

The company production has measures to cut consumer cost by producing fuel-efficient cars.

Threats

Big international corporations are venturing in Volvo's luxurious cars.

Volatile price for oil makes the car industry face up with highly unpredictable market.

High cost of finances inhibits consumers to access funding for buying cars as well as the company's potential to acquire loans for product and brand marketing

Advancements in technology inhibit the company ability to keep ahead of competitors as far as safety is concerned

Positioning

Volvo's choice to maintain high quality or value for their product exemplifies to the customer that they will get their true money's worth by buying their products. The combination of the safety features, advanced efficiency and fuel efficiency places the brand ahead of the competitor. The personalization of the brand to suit the needs of the consumer will increase the brands presence in the markets and its capacity to appeal to more potential consumers.

With the high focus on the quality of the product, the company creates an identity to ride on for sustainability of the products position in the market. Once consumers identify with the brand features that Volvo provide competitors will have a difficult task to offload the ideology from the market. The product will have obtained an identity and stumped their presence in the market (Trout. J., 2004).

Product/Service

The company brands share of the marker is relatively small compared to the larger car manufacturers with a 1 to 2% share (Jan & Hsiao, 2004). The company's product range include; versatile estates (V); sedans (S), coupes/convertibles (C) and SUV/cross country vehicles (XC). Recently, the company has embarked on a mission to increase its market share through increased capital investments and aggressive marketing of the luxurious products they have to offer. The Volvo S60 serves a family car with SUV capacity and fuel efficiency and safety features .

Customer Profile

The potential consumer of a Volvo car is a person in their middle age with an average of two kids. In the world of rising cost it is observed that the consumer is concerned with cutting cost and minimizing their impact on the environment. There is also a trend on the consumer to prefer fuel efficient cars owing to the government policies on taxing big car owners higher. This means that consumer preferences will tend towards small cars with lesser impact on the environment.

The growing preference for smaller families and family safety is a growing trend to the world today. This means that the consumer will consider the safety features of the car and it carrying capacity.

Marketing Channels

As a global corporation, the company needs to look at potential of selling their new car model to the world. Since the car model falls in the category of luxurious vehicles, need is created no to narrow their market outreach within a narrow market. The product (Volvo S60) is a global product that can appeal to the global market thus should be marketed to the globe. In irder to come up with appropriate marketing measures, research assessing the various marketing strategies is needful.

The research will guide in availing answers on the ideal ways to reach the target customer and impact the most. The ideal marking for the new brand Volvo S60 is web based advertisements and television sponsorship of family programs that attract many family viewers. Advertisement in urban media such as magazines and business papers will also serve to appeal to the target audience (Grant, 2010).

Holiday promotional offers need to be considered for the average urban worker where the consumers are enticed to participate in the competition and stand a chance to win a family holiday with the purchase of the new model Volvo S60. Additional to these, technology has made it easier for companies to market their products using mobile technology and web videos (Grant, 2010). The company can consider making their products presence in the market more through these technologies.