How do car manufacturers position their products in the market? Where they put their dots on the positioning map?
Out of curious, I went on to google images to search for images of positioning maps of cars and above were what I found. In this post, I want to specially position some different brands and models of cars. The brands that I’m interested include Mercedes Benz (My favourite brand), BMW, Audi, Toyota, Honda and Nissan. I guess they are few of the most popular brands of car in the world.
In all these six brands, they divide or position their models of their sedans into three significant category that are determined by the size, comfortable level, price, quality, and status that their cars represent.
Mercedes Benz: C-Class, E-Class, and S-Class
BMW: 3 Series, 5 Series, and 7 Series
Audi: A4, A6, A8
Toyota: Yaris, Altis and Camry
Honda: Fit, Civic and Accord
Nissan: Sentra, Altima and Maxima
For all the brands, I have ranked them in ascending way based on the size, comfortable level, price, quality, and status of the specific models. All of the brands positioning their products in 3 main categories. This act aims to target the different segments of consumers across Canada. The below average class consumers, middle class consumers and finally high class consumers. However, Mercedes Benz, BMW and Audi seem to be targeting the below average, middle and high class people in the rich people category as their prices are at least 50% above the prices of normal cars. The Japanese brands on the other hand, target the different income level of consumers in the middle to above middles classes of consumers.
This makes the purchase decision of different classes of consumers easier as they only consider the alternatives that they can afford. However, this positioning strategy makes the models in the middle sell more as most of the consumers neither want to have the best or the worst. They are trained to choose the ones on the middle. This scenario is well understand by most of the firms who supply consumer goods. To make their sales better and have a higher market share, they usually set the price in the middle especially the new players in the market. As time passes, and once they build up a stronger consumer base, they tend to position themselves at the higher end of the sector. This is important in creating larger economic profit. So, where you want to position your products?