You work for a luxury automaker that is planning to begin pr

You work for a luxury automaker that is planning to begin producing a line of mid-priced cars. As the company begins this trading-down plan, what branding strategy would you recommend? What are the trade-offs to consider with this strategy? In an essay of at least two pages, answer these questions and discuss both traditional and alternative branding strategies relevant to your needs. Explain in depth.

Solution

Each and every business goes through a period of transformation and that is considered to be healthy because a business needs change and it is mentioned that once a business is stagnant, the business is dead and we have witnessed in the last few years that the key is being dynamic. There are many successful business organization that had started doing business with a different product than what they are dealing with today and that is very normal and that gives birth to a brand. An organization can be successful in doing business with a single product and may also be one of the big players in that particular field but experimenting with anew product will give exposure to the organization and also experience to deal with new challenges and there are examples of organizations who have tried almost everything and also has been successful. Strategy and approach is the key point here and there have been organizations who have just displayed flexibility in their approach and been successful globally. Honda is such an example which has done that effectively in more than 30 countries sand has been successful to quite an extent.

ABC Automobiles is one of the big players in the automobile industry manufacturing vehicles in the luxury range and has been successful to some extent in the industry. It has produced the most luxury cars that are being owned by people and ABC has been successful in creating a name popularity in such an industry, there has been various competitors but ABC always had the competitive advantage over its competitors because it had selected a genre where it will excel and that is the genre of luxury cars. The employees are also used to prepare such combustion engines and the setup that the organization possess is also favorable for such vehicles. In the last few years the market for the luxury cars are bit on the lower side because of various reasons and the most important is the growth of huge competition in the particular genre of automobile which has made the sales of ABC go down and as ABC banks only on this field of the industry, therefore their business is also going to some extent as they do not possess an alternative.

In order to get out of this situation the organization has planned to produce a range a mid priced cars so that they have more options in doing business and also they want explore this avenue of the automobile industry as they want to expand. The main challenge here lies in the marketing and branding of the new products because now the strategy has to be different from what it was in the recent past. ABC focused on branding of luxury products and they were aware that their products possess a specific audience in the market and the target was fixed therefore the advertisements and marketing strategies were according to that concept but now as the products will be mid priced therefore the organization has to identify their target audience first. The target audience now are middle class section and also the upper middle class section therefore the branding should be different because the audience is totally different. The brand has a value and that should be used and the strategy should be very normal that ABC is now available to all this will attract the mass and make them interested because everybody wanted to possess a car manufactured by ABC but it was not possible by them because of the high range of price but now that is practical.

Now, people will want to possess the car of their dream band and that too in their range. The advantage sand limitations of the product should be identified in order to have a proper marketing strategy and here the focus will be on economy and it should be promoted as \"Economic ABC for you\" the target audience has increased therefore the medium used for advertisements should also change in order to attract the most number of people. The form of business that is to be change will increase the popularity and acceptance of the brand among people and that too largely. As the brand will be affordable to the mass it may lose its elite nature and the upper class who considered the brand as niche may no more to that this will also affect the business and there should also be a strategy for the same.

ABC can now divide their operation into two sectors in which one will be the luxury sector which will manufacture the luxury cars and the other will be the mid price sector, for the luxury sector the setup is ready and there needs no change but for the other sector proper implementation almost from the scratch is required. A proper infrastructure along with new employees has to be established so that the process is easier to deal with. The strategy required for branding has to be in synchronization with the traditional and alternative branding because in order to attract the maximum number of people both are essential. So both the strategies should be applied with each other in order to be successful with the new product.