Marketing Strategy Of Volkswagen

Firstly, from the view of company, Volkswagen scandal is result from the misuse of CSR that the company regarded it as a marketing tool. Although Volkswagen promised to persuade CSR as their corporation culture, the reality turns out to be opposite. Volkswagen equipped defeat devices on cars deliberately to pass environmental tasks and actually the defeat device emitted nitrogen oxide approximately 40 times of standard (Dans, 2015). This behaviour can be explained as "green-washing", which means the real performance is different from the test results (Eric, 2015). The motivation of deception largely depends on corporation’s aggressive goal called “Strategy 2018” , which aim to increase annual sales to ten million cars by 2018 (Volkswagen, 2014). Therefore, Volkswagen needs to lower the price to be competitive to its competitors and one task is to reduce cost of production. Volkswagen used CSR concept to cover unethical actions. It demonstrates that Volkswagen focused on persuading the short-term target rather than its customers, long-term reputation and environment (Bansal, King & Seijts,

The automotive industry globally involves the processes of manufacturing as well as sales of cars and other automobiles. The business of this industry is also inclusive of retailing activities like services; sale of spare parts, gas-station retails etc. by the year 2015, and the growth rate of the industry is expected to have a rise of 5.5% (Market Line, 2012). Moreover, as per International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers, this industry is the leading driver in terms of global economic progress and the largest employer. The changing trends and rising demand for technically advanced cars are giving out more opportunities. This essay is going to be a presentation on the analysis of the Volkswagen positioning strategy with respect to the Porters models of competitive strategies. This essay would be vital, as this analysis would help in revealing the company’s competitive and strategic position in the industry.

As a multinational corporation, the implication of the scandal determines the fate of numerous stakeholders both internal and external. Internal stakeholders comprise of the board, managers and employees while external stakeholders subsume shareholders, customers and suppliers. The economic, political and social impacts of the dishonest practices would shape the fate of Volkswagen and affect the future prospects of the automotive industry. Common shareholders whilst not involved in the day to day running of the business placed faith and belief in the firm by providing capital had suffered severe economic loss as share prices (get something for stat). Despite the callous deception in advertising the defeat device displayed no signs of disturbing vehicle performance, however, customers of Volkswagen and its subsidiary vehicles suffer from lower resale value. In addition, even though the scandal was global, European consumers were the most affected with diesel cars accounting for 41% of all European cars (Fontaras, 2016). This high percentage in respect to other nations is a result of incentives provided by the European Union for the purchase of diesel vehicles such as subsidies towards the production process resulting in lower premiums compared to petrol counterparts (Vidal, 2015) In additional with sales falling suppliers of Volkswagen would likely lose future contracts or have current contracts downgraded as less parts are required. Thus, this loss of future

When Quiksilver announced the start of its women line Roxy in 1990, they defined the brand as a “fun, bold, athletic, daring and classy” brand for young women. Market segmentation is a crucial marketing strategy and Roxy utilizes the four bases that are commonly used for segmenting consumer markets including geographic, demographic, psychographic, and benefits sought segmentation. The geographic segmentation is ideally unlimited for the Roxy target market because the brand offers clothes for both warm and cold weather, however, it focuses mainly on the “beach lifestyle” and is generally more popular in beach towns. The demographic segmentation of the Roxy brand, is aimed to attract young women between the

Volkswagen wants to become a global and environmental leader in the automotive world and has developed the “Strategy 2018”. The “Strategy 2018” is stated in their latest annual report in the goals and strategies section as follows:

Volkswagen was founded in 1937 but they were known as Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens mbH. In that same year, they renamed the company to Volkswagenwerk, which stands for “The people’s car company,” (This day in history). Volkswagen was doing great in business and did not have any scandals or issues until the year 2005. Volkswagen started pushing for a diesel line in their industry, but not just any diesel line, they wanted to make cars diesel. They did just that and everything was going great until the May of 2014 when West Virginia University Researchers published a finding of significantly higher in-use emissions in the 2012 and 2013 TDI models (Barrett and Speth, 2015).

Volkswagen goal is to become the ecological and economical leader in the automotive industry and to be the world’s leading automaker by 2018. Volkswagen has four main objectives through which they will achieve their goals.

With billions of dollars invested and hundreds of thousands of Americans employed (Department of Commerce, n.d.), the automobile industry has a vast influence in the United States. Since the time Henry Ford developed the assembly line production (Statista, n.d.) the industry has grown into a global market with no signs of slowing down. Top car companies are constantly searching for new innovations to set them apart from their competitors. Among those companies is Volkswagen (VW). A company which strides in emissions and fuel efficiency turned, not only to be false, but caused a severe amount of damage (Ewing, 2016).

When the name Mercedes-Benz is mentioned, it needs no explanation to talk about a well company as it, but most people have no idea about this automobile legacy and its product’s line. In fact, Mercedes Benz is always associated with the world class brand of cars, buses, coaches and tracks known for their luxurious nature. Mercedes Benz is not a company in itself; Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm May Bach call its parent company Daimler AG, which was founded, in 1890.

Volkswagen a parent company of Skoda is Europe’s largest carmaker producing cars, trucks and vans. It

Dr. Heike Nolte University of Applied Sciences Emden-Leer Constantiaplatz 4 26723 Emden, Germany Tel: +49 4921 807 1007 Fax: +49 4821 807 1228 heike.nolte@hs-emden-leer.de Dr. Alva Wright Butcher School of Business and Leadership University of Puget Sound 1500 N. Warner St. #1032 Tacoma, WA 98416-1032 Tel: 253- 879-3349 Fax: 253-879-3156 butcher@pugetsound.edu Supported by a 2011 NIBEN Curriculum Development Grant September 2011

After the announcement of the emissions scandal, Volkswagen is fumbling to figure out how to pick up the broken pieces of its brand image. Volkswagen had ruined the trust of all of its stakeholders. The announcement of the cheated emissions test has crushed Volkswagen’s stock price by almost 20%, which implies an almost $27 billion loss in market value. This scandal required the recall of 11 million cars with an expected cost of over $25 billion in penalty fees and the cost to fix recalled vehicles. This scandal of much higher than stated emissions directly contradicted with Volkswagen’s branding of a clean emission diesel vehicle. It could not have gotten much counter-intuitive. Volkswagen has spent 45% of its television advertising budget directly focusing on Volkswagen’s products’ low emissions. That marketing budget is now valueless. However, most importantly, Volkswagen upset its customer base. The owners of these recalled vehicles not only feel lied to and betrayed, they have to take time to bring their recalled car in to get fixed. But, one of the biggest complaints is the loss of resale value totalling nearly $5000. This may disrupt repeat customers and

In general terms, marketing is all related to the places of buying and selling of goods and services to satisfy customers’ needs. Nowadays marketing is the most important issues for success of every business marketing is the activity, set of institution, and process for creating, communicating, delivering, and

AG, BMW stands for both performance and luxury. The company was founded in 1916 as an aircraftengine manufacturer and produced engines during World War I and World War II. It evolved into a

Volkswagen has set a bold goal of dethroning Toyota as the world’s largest auto maker. This goal includes significantly increasing the North American market share, as Volkswagen currently holds only 2.2 percent of the United States market. Volkswagen’s strategy includes cutting prices and tailoring its cars to better fit the American lifestyle and tastes. This includes increasing the size of its vehicles and modifying certain amenities, such as increasing the cup holder size to fit the larger sized beverages which Americans are known to drink. In order to become the world’s largest auto maker by 2018, Volkswagen’s management team has set a lofty goal of selling 800,000 vehicles per year