Zipcar It's Not about Cars It's about Urban Life - Case Study Example

Zipcar: "It's Not about Cars- It's about Urban Life"INTRODUCTIONA balance between benefits offered and customer needs with a consideration for the prevalent value systems, gives zip-car a winner strategy when it comes to taking the car sharing/rental industry by a storm. Making effective use ofmarketing principles to gain the current success in a short span of time, Zipcar is the focus of this study to highlight their benefit-value positioning success and future prospects for the business (Kotler and Armstrong, 1991).

A1-Zipcar’s benefit oriented positioning is one of the key reasons why the company was able to effective gain the current momentum. By offering customers something other than the conventional car-rental, Zipcar offered an array of benefits that included reduced travelling time in densely populated cities like New York. By offering a variety of cars to choose from customers had the opportunity to experience new vehicles according to their moods. It helped in saving money and catered to their need of having a car without actually owning one.

By tapping on their values of greening, it widely promoted the positive environmental impact of zipcar through reduced emissions, fuel consumption etc. comfort of rental and easy accessibility also made it easy for customers to trial, use and remain loyal to the business. A2 Zipcar started off by tapping on one of the attributes from the prevalent value system, environment friendliness. By promoting the environment benefits like reduced emissions and responsible initiative, Zipcar managed to differentiate itself from the other market players.

Pairing this with a set ofbenefits like convenience, affordability, variety and green attitude etc., Zipcar was able to consolidate both the benefits and value to reflect the company’s image of economy and efficiency. The positioning of ‘we love earth’ and subsequent promotion of how they do so through their offering they are able to focus on how efficiency of their business and its purpose contributes towards convenient, affordable and safe travelling. A3The value based positioning by Zipcar based on environment consciousness and responsible actions towards reducing environmental harm, which they started off with, was successful in giving them a string footing in the market.

This is the positioning that allowed them to differentiate themselves from the array of car rental services that were prevalent in the market at that that. Over time, they had to focus on the benefits to stay in the game and strived to offer the customers convenience, affordability and efficiency in car rental/sharing. This helped the business gain momentum. It would not be wrong to say that value based positioning helped them get noticed and benefits based positioning helped them become the successful car sharing giant it is today.

Even thougha combination of both is used at the moment, the benefit based positioning is slightly stronger because it offers tangible benefits and caters to customers immediate needs.A4 The future prospects for Zipcar look bright as it has tapped the corporate market as well to promote the green initiative and help them save. This has helped them broaden their reach, emphasize on their values and benefits and most importantly gain a head start in the market. SUMMARYCustomer oriented strategies are driven by the needs of the customers.

A combination of tangible benefits and intangible values make a perfect strategy mix that can help gain market standing and make a business a success, much in the case of Zipcar.REFERENCES:Kotler, P. and Armstrong, G. (1991).Principles of marketing. 1st ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.