Every brand has their own marketing positions and their loyal customers, so one night i asked myself “is it always a good way if a company explore a new market with using the same brand?”
Let me provide an example. Toyota, as we all know, is one of the biggest car manufacturers in the world. After Toyota has achieved a huge enough success in the global market of civil vehicles, they started to think “we are so successful in making cars, we have advanced technology and employees; why don’t we develop a new product line producing luxurious cars and attack the European and American markets?” Instead of using the same brand “Toyota”, they create a new brand “Lexus”. Lexus and later on Acura created by Honda and Infiniti created by Nissan have a great success in the market of luxurious cars. Before I came to Canada, I had no interests to understand cars. When I first came to Canada, I thought Lexus was an European brand of cars, and I didn’t even heard about Acura and Infiniti.
Brand is a representation of the company and of the product. Representation becomes a feature, feature becomes an idea, and idea becomes the dominant ideology from a society. Once the ideology is planted in people, it is not easy to remove and change. Toyota is a brand of course, and it represents affordable cars, family cars, user-friendly cars…etc. If Toyota produces luxurious cars and sells to Europe and North America, first it’s no easy to convince customers in short term that they can produce fast, luxurious and safe cars too. Second instead of choosing Japanese car brands, some drivers always prefer European cars. (Nationalism?)
On the other hand, one of the other best car manufacturers, Porsche, goes to the other way. Before, their sport cars always represented super fast, super slim and super expensive. They were loved by drivers and car lovers because Porsche cars were always “Isolating Mother-in-Law” type. (Two seats, driver and girlfriend only)
Cayman S: my favourite.
However, instead of just focusing on sport cars, Porsche obviously has aggression to develop new markets. First of all is the Cayenne series:
This guy doesn’t be slim anymore~ Even though the speed, acceleration and horse power is still high, Cayenne is more like a SUV. Cayenne is ok overall, but it doesn’t seem very luxurious to me even though it’s Porsche. The first time I saw Cayenne, I thought “is Porsche down grading himself?” It’s ok to develop new markets, but it’s little bit weird to combine Porsche and SUV. Why don’t the company create a new brand?
Here is the disaster. Panamera series is the latest series published by Porsche last year; it’s also the first RV product line of Porsche. This car has all features as a RV, but it is common, in fact too common for a Porsche car.
Porsche doesn’t have large market shares like Toyota, doesn’t have huge capital and factory like Benz and BMW, but Porsche is still one of the most famous brands in the world because Porsche is a top expert in producing luxurious sport cars; it’s how they maintain the brand’s reputation and brand loyalty. Now they may be finding a way to increase the company’s profit, and selling more different types of cars is a good idea. The effectiveness of the brand “Porsche” is strong; that’s why they keep using the same brand in different product lines. However, the dominant ideology “Porsche = fancy sport cars” works so well in this few decades, and it’s hard to change. Do the customers like a Porsche RV? I do not know. And what will Porsche become in long term? What is Porsche’s next marketing strategy? I want to know.
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