Lack of understanding niche marketing cost many automakers their very existence.
Rarely has any heavy industry, or major sector of American business had such an enormous degree of marketing catastrophes as has the auto industry. Most businesses can miss the mark in marketing, and when flaws become apparent, corrections can be made to repair a damaged image, then, with appropriate corrections, try to regain market losses.
However, when auto manufacturers make such errors, costs can be in the tens of millions of dollars, or even billions of dollars, and, as has happened in a number of cases, bring down the very existence of the company altogether.
Less than a hundred years ago, when automobile production hit its stride, there were literally hundreds of car builders in this country. Today, there are three, well, possibly two, if the present rate of losses continues much longer.
In the early days of the industry, marketing trial and error was expected, and in 1934, when the Chrysler Airflow bombed, there was more than marketing to blame. Production delays and a grotesque body design didn’t help, but in the fifties, when market research was considered ‘scientific’, the Edsel became the most phenomenal marketing fiasco of all time! The late, world-renown semanticist, S.I. Hayakawa called the marketing research firm that Ford used for the Edsel, “Harlot social scientists who tell their clients what their clients want to hear.”
Also in the fifties, Studebaker had the most successful niche market models in America, but instead of taking advantage of their unique market character, they made some of the most incredibly illogical, even ridiculous management decisions imaginable, and pirated several Chevrolet designers to develop a car that more closely resembled Chevrolet, and designed themselves right out of business! The logic that people who want a car like a Chevrolet will, most likely, BUY a Chevrolet, not a car that only resembles a Chevy! BUT, that logic seems to have been a little too difficult for the South Bend auto maker’s managers.
American Motors, Auburn, Cord, Deusenburg, Hudson, Kaiser, Packard, and several other car makers made similarly idiotic mistakes, and paid the ultimate price for doing so.
Asked why GM did not make electric cars, a GM executive recently said, “We did make an electric car in the early nineties, but the public did not show sufficient interest in it to justify full scale production of that kind of car!” Such fallacious and absurd reasoning is a gross oversimplification and does not address the reality of the situation.
GM did produce an ugly, bloated pig of a car with an electric motor, with virtually insignificant promotion, and when great throngs of people didn’t rush out to buy one, they fatuously concluded, “People aren’t ready for electric cars!” Choosing electric, hybrid or fuel efficient cars, today, sends meaningful messages to the masterminds of motor city.
Americans drove TWELVE BILLION miles less this year than last year, because gas prices forced us from our cars whenever discretionary travel gave us a choice, drivewise! .
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