Anthony Fontanelle asked: For the past quarter of a century, the highly profitable midsize cars segment was dominated by Asian car manufacturers such as Honda and Toyota. The reliability and quality of the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord played a major role in the dominance of these car makers over Ford and General Motors. Recently, the Michigan-based car manufacturers are implementing aggressive ad campaigns to promote their midsize cars.
For Ford, they have launched advertisements which show that the Ford Fusion is a better alternative to the Camry or the Accord. Known as the Ford Fusion Challenge, the Dearborn, Michigan-based car manufacturer had real consumers test the Fusion against the Camry and the Accord. The result of these tests shows that the Fusion has what it takes to compete with those mentioned Asian cars in terms of quality.
“We need to earn people’s confidence and trust, and we believe we’ve got the goods to back it up,” says Barry Engle, the general manager of the Ford Division for marketing.
For General Motors, it was the Saturn brand that used an aggressive marketing strategy. The Saturn fuel injector¬-equipped Saturn Aura was named earlier this year as the North American Car of the Year. This is being used by the revitalized Saturn brand in marketing the Aura against the Camry and the Accord.
The company is providing customers with Accord and Camry units to test drive against the Saturn Aura. While using this strategy poses a risk that car buyers would opt for a Camry or an Accord after test driving it on Saturn dealerships. General Motors though is confident that the Aura will attract more buyers and lead them away from import cars. “We’ve really got to fight hard,” says Mark LaNeve, General Motors’ vice president of North American sales. “If you see a more aggressive tone, we just want to shake people’s consciousness a little bit.”
The domination of Toyota and Honda is evident in the fact that General Motors and Ford posted declining market shares for the past years. In 1980, General Motors cornered 46 percent of the United States car market. After 27 years, it is now down to 19.2 percent and is at risk for falling lower. For Ford, the past 27 years saw their car market share plunge from 19.2 percent to just 11.1 percent today.
In contrast, Toyota has tripled its market share while Honda doubled is sales output. Further proof is the losses being incurred by General Motors and Ford. Both companies have already closed down plants and reduced the number of employees. Meanwhile, Honda and Toyota are expanding their business operations in the United States by constructing more and more assembly plants and facilities in the country.
Observers of the auto industry pointed out that General Motors and Ford must show to car buyers that they have equaled Honda and Toyota in terms of car quality. “It’s a desperate time for Ford and General Motors,” says David Koehler, a clinical marketing professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago. “They’re begging the consumer to at least try us and consider us,” he added.
Whether the aggressive marketing strategies being employed by General Motors and Ford will reverse buying trend in the midsize car segment is yet to be proven. But judging by the confidence that the two American car manufacturers are showing, it seems that they may have finally come up with cars which can give Toyota and Honda a run for their money.
Chad
