Marketing the New Toyota Prius - Essay Example

Marketing the New Toyota Prius Essay 1 The new Toyota Prius, being a full hybrid electric and mid-sized car, would appeal to people who intend to save on fuel, those who are interested in eco-friendly automobiles, and others would prefer it just because of the perceived dependability of the Toyota brand. Nevertheless, since there are many other models of mid-sized cars produced by both Toyota and its competitors, and because Toyota Prius is just one of the Toyota models, the eco-friendly aspect of the car would be main selling point. The target audience is therefore the population that is interested in eco-friendly products, and specifically eco-friendly cars. While being eco-friendly stands out as a key feature of the Toyota Prius, the aspect also oscillates well with the brand’s dependability, which goes well with the target market. This type of market segmentation is termed behavioural segmentation because it is based on the buyers’ ‘knowledge of, attitude towards, or response to a product’ (Chandrasekar 2010, p. 63). The key requirements from the target group for the Toyota Prius are eco-friendliness and fuel-efficiency of the car. According to Ferrell and Hartline (2010, p. 175), behavioural segmentation targets the benefits that consumers seek from a product such as quality, value, beauty, image enhancement, speed, sportiness, excitement, convenience and so on. Along with these, behavioural segmentation is based on product usage aspects such as heavy users, medium users, and light users; non-users, former users; and first time users (Ferrell & Hartline, 2010, p. 175). A customer with interest in an eco-friendly car will undoubtedly also have interest in quality. That is, the Toyota Prius has to offer other quality features found in a non-hybrid electric car and offer value for the customer’s money. The customer for instance expects the Toyota Prius to have a sporty look, to offer the excitement expected of a hybrid car, to have adequate speed as a normal car and so forth. The target audience expects these features of the Toyota Prius to be superior compared with the model’s key competitors such as Mazda 5 Sport, Nissan Cube and Mini Cooper Clubman S. According to Ferrell and Hartline (2010, p. 176), the distinctions under behavioural market segmentation are tied to the reasons that customers buy and use products, making behavioural segmentation the most powerful approach to market segmentation because it uses actual consumer behaviour with respect to product usage to make distinctions among market segments. In particular, if the product benefits of the new Toyota Prius are regarded more superior to what competing brands have to offer, the car would attract various sections of the target audience such as non-users, former users, and first time users. More importantly, customers will be attracted more to the new Toyota Prius model if they are assured that the car will meet their objectives of reducing pollution and saving on fuel consumption. To understand how marketing can help meet the above requirements, it is important to understand the aspects of a new products and consumer behaviour with reference to the new product. A new product can be described in three different ways. First is a product that is new to the organisation, in which case the organisation goes through the process of developing the product, testing it, and then introducing it to the market. Second is a product that is new to consumers, in which case consumers are not already aware of the type of product before the organisation introduces it to them. Third is a product that is new to both consumers and the organisation (Petzer et al 2006, p. 175). The new Toyota Prius cannot be described as a new product in the market as such because the Prius model has been in the market for some time now and there exist other hybrid car models in the market such as the Honda Insight hybrid. But the new Toyota Prius model has extra features such as a flashy solar-roof package that generates electricity to power the cabin-ventilation fans which pump hot air out of the car when its is parked. Such attributes can be regarded as product repositioning (Petzer et al 2006, p. 175) for the new Toyota Prius since it is a car that has been in existence but now being launched with new features. The other aspect that needs to be understood is consumer behaviour. The introduction of new products like the new Toyota Prius model is vital to both the consumer and the marketer. For the consumer, it increases opportunities to satisfy the personal, social as well as environmental needs; and for the marketer, it offers a significant mechanism for keeping the firm competitive and profitable (Tyagi & Kumar, 2004, p. 135). According to Rafinejad (2007, p. 111), customer expectations are determined by the promises that a supplier makes during the process of selling a product, in the process of establishing and nurturing the relationship, and when communicating the value preposition of the brand. Thus, to ensure that the target market’s needs are met, the marketer must have an understanding of what has been promised as perceived by the customer (Rafinejad 2007, p. 111). In this case, the new Toyota Prius promises not only to be an eco-friendly and fuel-saving car but also one that offers other excellent quality features. Toyota must thus manage the customer satisfaction process by ensuring that all the departments involved in handling the new Prius commit to the timely accomplishment of what they are supposed to do so that they deliver the promises made to the target audience. Essay 2 The design of the new Toyota Prius was informed by the need to have environmentally friendly cars. According to Peattie and Charter (2003, p. 734), environmental concern has created demand for new products, and is causing existing products to be reconsidered and in some cases redesigned, reformulated and produced differently. Notably, the existence of a car that can be partly powered using electricity is an idea that every environment-conscious consumer would like to embrace because of the impact that the automobile industry has on the environment because of the use of fossil fuels. To meet the environment-conscious needs of the consumer, Toyota must have gone through the six stages of product development which are marketing assessment and internal assessment; prototyping, core development and testing, industrialisation, commercialisation and optimisation (Annacchino 2003, p. 269). Optimisation is however applicable to a product that has been in the market for some time and is therefore not part of this essay. In the marketing assessment and internal assessment phase the company performs an introspection of its direction and conducts and external look at the product’s opportunities (Annacchino 2003, p. 269). The aim of doing this is to obtain a clear view of how the product’s opportunity fits with the company goals and objectives. For the case of the Toyota Prius hybrid car, the innovation came as a result of the conscience element in that after the popularity of the standard sports utility vehicle, there was need for a revolution by having a car better suited for environmental concerns (Dahlen, Lange & Smith 2010, p. 142). In the prototyping phase, the concept (such as that of having a hybrid car) evolves into a hardware that is functional. The company is supposed to communicate this idea to the customer so as secure early feedback (Annacchino 2003, p. 269). In the case of the Prius, the credentials of the product exactly matched the moods of the moment in the market and this enabled Toyota to own the hybrid car category despite the existence of many other competitors in the market (Dahlen, Lange & Smith 2010, p. 142). Core development and testing involves testing of the design in question by design verification and design qualification. At this stage the product matures from the physical visualisation of an idea into a product that can be produced with predictable performance. The next stage, industrialisation, involves making the product manufacturable and developing the manufacturing processes. At this point, the product has matured from a development environment to a manufacturing environment (Annacchino 2003, 274-279). For instance the idea that a car can be powered using both electricity and conventional fuel shifts from just being an idea to being something practical which can be visualised in a model Next is the commercialisation stage, when the product is rolled out to the market and units are placed in the hands of consumers. This is the stage that carries the biggest test because it demonstrates the final acceptance or rejection of the product by the consumer. When a product is commercialised, it means that the product has been fully tested to and a price set for it, in addition to being marketed through the most effective route to the users. At this stage, there are no excuses in case the product fails, meaning that the product is ready in every sense of the product design and marking programme (Annacchino 2003, p. 280). Before introducing the Toyota Prius into the market, Toyota may also have reflected on consumers’ needs with respect to developing a new product. The characteristics that are perceived to play an important role in new product success include need fulfilment, relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, conspicuousness and trialability (Foxall, Goldsmith & Brown 1998, p. 14-15). Need fulfilment is about the fact that consumers do not buy what they do not need (Foxall, Goldsmith & Brown 1998, p.15). The marketer must therefore try to ascertain what basic motivations can be satisfied by the product (in this case the Prius hybrid) and then design the product so that it offers these benefits to the consumer. Of course consumers will then make an assessment of whether the new products does a better job in offering benefits than the existing products – this refers to the relative advantage of the product. In this case the Prius is perceived to be better because of its environmental friendliness. The concept of compatibility refers to the consumer’s belief that the new product offering will be consistent with existing values and lifestyles (Foxall, Goldsmith & Brown 1998, p.15), which is the case with many people today being environment-conscious. Complexity refers to an assessment of how difficult or complex it will be to use a product such the new Prius. Conspicuousness is about how visible a product is to consumers (Foxall, Goldsmith & Brown 1998, p.15). People must know about a product before they can even think of buying it. This means that to sell the new Toyota Prius, Toyota must have engaged in an aggressive marketing campaign to publicise the car. Finally, trialability implies that the marketer must attempt to reduce the perceived risk of buying on the side of the consumer by allowing consumers to try the new products. One way is to allow trial of the new product without commitment from the consumer (Foxall, Goldsmith & Brown 1998, p.15). There is no doubt that Toyota allowed consumers to test-drive the Prius hybrid before acquiring it, as a way of reassuring them. References Annacchino, M 2003, New product development: From initial idea to product management, Elsevier, New York. Chandrasekar, K S 2010, Marketing management: Text & cases, Tata McGraw-Hill Education, New Delhi. Dahlen, M, Lange, F & Smith T 2010, Marketing communications: A brand narrative approach, John Wiley & Sons, New York. Ferrell, O C, Hartline, M 2010, Marketing strategy, 5th edn, Cengage Learning, New York. Foxall, G R, Goldsmith, R E & Brown, S 1998, Consumer psychology for marketing, volume 1, 2nd edn, Cengage Learning EMEA, New York Peattie, K & Charter M 2003, ‘Green marketing’, in M J Baker, The marketing book, 5th edn, Butterworth Heinemann, Oxford. Chapter 28, p. 725-756. Petzer, D, Ismail, Z, Roberts-Lombard, M, Hern, L, Klopper, H, Subramani, D, Wakeham, M, Chipp, K & Berndt, A 2006, Fresh perspectives: marketing, Pearson South Africa, Johannesburg. Rafinejad, D 2007, Innovation, product development and commercialization: Case studies and key practices for market leadership, J. Ross Publishing, New York. Tyagi, CL & Kumar A 2004, Consumer behaviour, Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, New Delhi. Read More