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Shift in Car Companies Priorities lead to Rapid Industry Turnaround

As I scan the car company’s websites over the last month or so you can’t help but notice the news they are projecting on us that they are seeing “record sales” or other drastic increases in sales numbers from this same time a year ago. It would be hard to convince us that the success is from a drastically improved economy, because of the still depressed economy we see still. But instead I have to credit the car dealers and manufactures on these successes because of how they are marketing and designing their cars around what people want.

“Build it and they will come”?not so fast

Back in the golden days of car sales and a great economy the car companies could make anything they wanted, throw it out on the lot, have one good advertisement campaign and they would sell out. They were in charge. An extreme example would be when Henry Ford started producing his Model T’s; he offered two colors, black or black. He was going to make whatever car he wanted because he knew he had the customer in his pocket and they needed his product whether they liked the details or not. I feel we got into this same frame of mind when car companies continued to make bigger and bigger gas crushing, mega vehicles. Although the big SUV’s were selling, they did not show much foresight in term of fuel economy and how the price of gas would affect everyone.

After the bailout and the tough economy of 2008 and after, it seems car companies are becoming more active in communicating with their customers and monitoring economy and social trends better than they did before. The industry’s new cars are compact cars, crossover vehicles, and hybrid technology vehicles. All three of these vehicle’s inceptions come from recognition of how the customer is shopping for a car. I feel that the growth in social media presence and market research had led to these successes but for all we know they could have had a few good guesses; I hope it’s the former.

Cars becoming seasonal?

Advertisements seem to be more focused and directed to not only the kind of buyers attracted to the car but also the timing of when these ads come out. Convertibles in the spring and summer, rear wheel drive and four-wheel drive SUV’s in winter, and apparently trucks and crossovers in the fall. I read an article recently on Yahoo Autos (http://autos.yahoo.com/news/best-new-car-deals-for-october.html) which directed people to the best tailgating vehicles for football season. Although for the vast majority of us a car purchase is not an impulse buy, there is always a large group of people very close to the purchase of a new car that may be pushed over the edge with this type of ad. The personalization and seemingly customer driven campaigns will make the car company less of the big business stereotype and more of a friendly small business type.

As these car companies continue to act like every other successful business model out there, they will continue to regain the dominant position in our economy. Our economy needs them (as Congress would agree) and I’m glad to see that the car companies are doing their part to be there for us.