Brand Implementation of Volkswagen - Essay Example

? VOLKSWAGEN BRAND Volkswagen The Volkswagen is a brand for a group of entrepreneurs; companies whose main area of operation is within the automotive industry. They are well known for the manufacture and sale of the Volkswagen, Audi, Skoda, SEAT, Bentley, Lamborghini, Bugatti, and Porsche vehicles all over the world (Sanz and Damme, 2006, p.4). Their performance trend has been commendable all through with the period following 2006 illustrating a very positive trend of their performance. The analysts reason that with the upward trend illustrated, the brand is going to have doubled in its operations by the year 2018 and become the world’s largest vehicle company within the world. It however faces very stiff competition by the Toyota brand as well as the general motors’ company (GM). The Volkswagen brand currently ranks second from the Toyota and preceding the general motors’ brand within the global context. Though the general motors’ has had dominance within the US in the past, an acute decline within their sales has resulted to the takeover by the Volkswagen brand within the region. She is now the fastest growing brand as well as the brand whose sales has sky rocketed within the recent past. Future projections reveals the brands’ target as being to double their sales and production within the near future by adopting a strategy of increasing by more than 10% their sales annually. The greatest strength attributable to the commendable success of the business brand is the diversity within their products. Not only does the brand company produce the Volkswagen motors but has other products such as the golf, Audi, Skoda, SEAT, Bentley, Lamborghini, Bugatti, and Porsche. This diversity of production ascertains the good coverage of the market with the variations with their products. This also provides an advantage to the brand in that there is wider scope of distribution of risks from just one brand of operation to the diversified brands. There is also good representation of the various economic classes of people within the diversification strategy. Moreover, the sales made through the various brand products ascertains higher profit realization form various customer segments without actually affecting the main motor brand; the Volkswagen. Over and above, the innovativeness of the team strategically places the brand a notch higher that their competitors as they have been seen to have a very strong team of innovators. Nevertheless, the SWOT analysis reveals critical weaknesses that the brand suffer worst of which is the poor cash flow as noted by the extreme credit facilities extended by the brand especially to the first time customers. The brand is consented to the policy of ‘sign and drive’ through which potential buyers are not obligated to have any down payment as they purchase the vehicles in credit. This is a competition tool that has been useful to rate the brand the best within the competition spheres as her popularity of low credit as well as the no down payment has surpassed all her competitors’. Moreover, her diversification within the product line has seen her increase customer base over the years by gaining more access within the Indian as well as the Chinese market through the support of the Golf. These economies are popular in preferring the small vehicles and as such the brand gains the advantage over her competitors. Through the Golf, the brand records over two billion new customers annually within the emerging economies. Despite the internal challenges that the brand is faced with lots of internal challenges though some pointed out to the external environment which must be thoroughly addressed for the purpose of successful progression of the brand. The fuel shortage or concern within the global market necessitates the design of conservative automotives. The fossil fuels are facing the threat of extinction and thus require that locomotive industries device of ways that shall safe and utilize the fuels more efficiently. The regulation strategy within the utilization of fossil fuels requires that alternative solutions be sought towards the use of fuel for locomotives. Moreover, within the context of environmental sustainability, the brand is tasked to devise ways in which the harmful emissions of gases from the combustion of fuels by the locomotives are regulated. This is equally challenging for any player within the industry as the emissions of carbon dioxide has been on the rise and has been seen to contribute greatly to the environmental degradation currently observed (Volkswagen AG, 2007, p.7). Finally, though relatively low ranked challenge is the need for creativity and innovation through which the brand would focus and access the market segment within the emerging economies (Anon, nd, p. 5). However, this is not seen as more of a challenge as the brand is already seen to have made enormous step though the invention of Golf which has successfully hit the market segment within Chin as well as India. Environmental regulation principles apply to all manufacturing companies and they are thus entitled to work within the framework of sound utilization of resources as well as safe environmental practices (Anon, 2011, p.1). Within the locomotive industry, the requirements are such as the brand utilizes recyclable and environmentally friendly raw materials for the purpose of environmental conservation. The Volkswagen brand is well aware of such and is very much compliant (Hackenberg and Hildebrandt, 2007, p. 4). The current strategic position for the brand is to target all the market segments; the low income segments as well as the high income segments. However, their strength abides within the European region where most of the people own a vehicle from the brand. More Asian countries are now the target as the brand has already invented and introduced the Golf within India as well as within China. According to Schmidt, the brand is envisioned in becoming the world’s leading automotive dealer by the year 2018. They intend to expand their brand portfolio, increase the global service, target among other markets the growing emerging markets, modularized their cost strategies and create sustainable value. Moreover, they intend to focus their design and implementation mechanisms to continuous improvement strategies of diversification especially in the evolution of the internal combustion engines. Within the leadership sphere, the brand is strategic in spearheading the environmental sustainability campaigns with the design of alternative power technologies, within high standards of quality. Furthermore, the brand intends to venture into rather new areas of operations targeting other products such as has not been used to. Such includes the manufacture of buses as well as trucks for the emerging economies as well as the middle income market segments. Trucks as well as buses therefore form a very appealing market niche which the brand intends to exploit (Schmidt nd. p.3 of 34). Nevertheless, the brand owns a stream of companies through which she produces the different types of vehicles. Their design of operations therefore poses a great challenge within the line of operations owning to the coordination of the different products within the market. A critical evaluation of the weakness of the brand reveals the worst challenge to the brand as being the need to design vehicles suitable for all their market segments and to be satisfactory to their customers. This has been seen to be critical in that they have to maintain high levels of designs in order to gain and maintain market dominance within their areas of operations. The MQB (German Modular Querbaukasten) is the brand’s main advantage point within her operations. It is through the MQB system that the Volkswagen group produces and designs competitive and competitive products within the market segments. Through the system, the brand is in a position to realize higher financial scales within the manufacturing line. This is the new strategic approach for the brand in order to make the most from the market and in the process outrun the competition posed by the other dominant brands; the Toyota and the general motors’ brands (Buiga, 2012, p.397). The 1980’s era recorded high technological advancement within the entire globe. This was strongly felt within all manufacturing sectors and the automotive industry was equally affected. Our analysis reveals that the Volkswagen Corporation was equally hit by the technological move through which she adopted high mechanization for her operations. Automation overtook much of manual work over the 1980’s. However, though being very ambitious, the strategy opened a lot of managerial problems for the brand which ultimately necessitated reverse of management strategy to decline this strategy. Higher costs of educating the employees on the technological expertise required proved untimely and thus the corporation resulted to rethinking the strategy. However, the technological revolution that is currently sweeping through the globe necessitates the brand to embark on through technological operations. This forms the basis of our discussion pertaining the brand’s strategic change. The change is necessary for the brand to maintain her dominance within the industry and where possible to conform to the emerging trends within the business sphere. It is now more logical for the brand to engage the technological model in operations than it was during the 1080’s (Jurgens, nd, p.100). Technological advancement within the production industries lead to higher productivity reduces operational as well as overhead costs and therefore general improved performance. Automation would lead to the reduced costs in hiring employees as well as avoid unnecessary overheads that result to poor management of the employees. There is also higher productivity within the industry with the incorporation technology in the manufacturing sector. Nevertheless, despite the foreseeable change in economic perspective of the corporation, it is undoubtedly sure that the management strategies and operations are bound to change with the embrace of the change e.g through downsizing. This implies that the brand aims at improving or changing her financial performance via changing the structure in the workforce by reducing their number and in the process cut on the operating costs. Organizations realize this through strategic layoffs, redeployment, attrition, reorganization, orde-layering as well as through early retirement (Appelbaum, Patton and Shapiro, 2003, p.22). The Volkswagen automotive brand operates under the framework of a range of strategic visions as well as goals. Through the strategic focus, continuous improvement forms a critical prospect for the brand in order to continuously have relevance within the industry. The continuity of the brand to dominate the industry pegs its success on short term goals as well as planning for the long run perspective such as is the case for the brand’s 2018 vision. However, continuous evaluation is critical in order to enhance achievability of the set objectives In among many other strategic designs that the brand must incorporate into her operations is the digital advertising. Digital advertising strategy can be defined as the adoption of advertising and publicizing the brands products through the digital platforms such as the internet’s and other Bluetooth connections. Companies and other related brads would get value through engaging their clients within the digital platform as against the commonly used means. It is advisable that for the sake of the current evolution within the trends of doing business, adoption of mechanism that are more customers sensitive and effective are adopted. It is no longer the era when the manufacturing brands as well as businesses would wait to engage the customers whenever they come for their products or services but rather the time has changed necessitating a higher level of engaging the different groups or individual within an industry for higher results. I would propose that the Volkswagen brand adopts the use of more digital strategies within its operations. It is easy for the brand to reach any people, customers as well as the potentials within the whole world through use of electronically connected platforms such as the internet marketing. This strategy has been seen to be most effective within the current generation as innovations have brought about an evolution within these communication strategies. Internet accessing media such as the phones, i-pads, portable computers and many others have overtaken the globe. Therefore, the success if any business advertising strategy would buy more on the effectiveness of these strategic adverting means. My support for the digital platform of advertising is from the numerous advantages that accrue from the strategy as compared to the other strategies of manual advertising through the print media, radios as well as TV. Digital platform of engaging the client’s offers a better interaction avenue between the brand management as well as the customer structure as against what has been in the past. The word has easily gone digital within the era of technological advancement. A brand enjoys increased engagement of the potential clients into the affairs of the brand, through which the brand would reap greatly. The customers’ perspective of the benefits from such engagement is that customers will be in a position to engage the brand in a more ‘dialogue’ manner of communication as against the prior strategies which advocated for only the communication from one party hence ‘monologue’ (Redant, nd, p.4-5). There are however various steps through which the success of digital platform must lay on; these include planning, creation, actualization as well as the evaluation. Nonetheless, the successful implementation of digital media within the Volkswagen Corporation gives the brand numerous advantages among which are cost-effective. Digital platforms form a basis of the brand’s performance being personalized as well as broadcast. The only major drawback that would face the digital strategy of campaigns would only be the reach to the technologically disadvantaged segments of people. There are various levels of leaning and they determine the competence of persons within the technological field. Advertisement within every corporation or business venture helps in portraying the information of a brand to the external world (Gruhsem, 2013, p.1). Through this, the brand is able to inform the potential customers of the existing opportunities and products through which they are won to purchase of be part of the corporation. Competition within the business world requires that the business brands continuously engage in advertisement and as well as convincing customers and winning them to buy the products publicity for the sake of educating and informing. In the case of Volkswagen brand, the digital advertising strategy would be helpful in informing the potential customers of the existing brand’s products within the globe. Common digital platforms are very useful within business operations as they reach many people at once and are relatively cheap. Through this strategy, the corporation would be in a position to counter stiff competition by her competitors while at the same time realizing higher customer awareness. Moreover, digital platform would offer engaging opportunity where the brand’s companies would directly engage their clients and in the process be more successful. Through digital advertising and awareness, the brand would be a better position to exploit the major opportunity that she has in exploring the markets within the emerging markets (Winterkorn, 2012, p.43). Publicity for customized products such as the golf for the Indian as well as the Chinese markets would be more effective for the brand within the digital media. The effectiveness of the brand in capturing the market segment within these areas would result to increased sales for the brand within the surging populations there. Moreover, through the digital advertising, the brand would realize her strategic goals in improving the quality of life for her customers. Bibliography Anonymous. nd. Modular Transverse Matrix (MQB): A new level of flexibility, efficiency and model variety . MQB overview. MQB and engines workshop / Wolfsburg / VOLKSWAGEN / p.5. Appelbaum S. H.and Donia M. 2001. The realistic downsizing preview: a management intervention in the prevention of survivor syndrome (part II). Career Development International. 6/1 [2001 ] 5±19 5. Buiga A. 2012. Investigating the Role of MQB Platform in Volkswagen Group’s Strategy and Automobile Industry. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences. September 2012, Vol. 2, No. 9 p.397. Gruhsem S. 2013. Volkswagen presents Group publications as apps. Themes. 2013-03-14. p.1 Hackenberg and Hildebrandt. 2007. Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft strategy for compliance with recycling and recovery rates. 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