Competitors’ Strategies
This is very crucial to the success of the auto dealership. It has to have competitor strategies for various activities. These include the types of products they intend to launch in the near future and their financial status. This information will help the company to plan for the future and to have goals aimed at having at-par goals with the competition. The other bit of information that will greatly help the dealer as concerns competition is the promotion methods being used by the competitors. This is very important as it helps the company to know the kind of promotional methods to use to reach out and to convince the customers.
Tastes and Preferences
The market for the various goods and services is subject to the trends associated with customers. These customers will change their tastes and preferences of the various commodities they purchase and use, and if not well observed, may lead to a company like this one losing a market share. This means that trends in the market that make customers change from using a particular product to another should be closely monitored to have up-to-date information pertaining to the same. Tastes may change due to a number of factors such as new brands in the market, lowered prices or influence of the customer’s psychological set up which is subject to marketing research (Selden, 1997).
Product and Groups
There are various quality characteristics of a product that customers look for in a certain geographical, demographical or physiographical setup. These specific needs need to be met. A car that is fascinating to a youth group may not be fascinating to an older group of customers. This calls for product differentiation and can only be achieved through market segmentation, targeting and positioning. Therefore the dealership should learn of these differences and make products that suitably fit the various groups to enable it to have a market share that is defined
Pricing
The automobile may be having the problem of pricing its line of automobiles. This may have a problem in the marketing efforts of the vehicles as this will impact badly sales if not well done. The price of the various vehicles should be according to a number of factors. This includes the use and luxury associated with the vehicle. In pricing, it is also very important to put into consideration the competitors’ prices so as to be at par with the competition.
How to Monitor
Various methods may be employed by the company to enable it to have up-to-date information as concerns the market. The most common is conducting research that is aimed at knowing the customer’s needs before coming up with a product. The other very important thing is to have a customer market information system that has a database for customer demographics, physiographic and other variables so as to equip the company with the needed arsenal to combat such changes.
It is also important to have a monitoring system of the dealership’s competitors. This will help in analyzing their strategies and to have a way to center their aims and intentions. It is also important to cut a market niche for oneself so as to have a goal of protecting that market at whatever cost. It is also critical to listen to what a customer says prior to and after-sale. This means the company should make a follow-up of a sale to maintain good rapport and reduce dissonance after a sale due to the fact that it is a huge purchase that customers make (Joshi, 2005).
Need to Monitor
The dealership has the prerogative to have close monitoring of these variables to have a good market share and to maintain its market share. Once a customer thinks that he is not getting value for money, he shifts camp to the place where he thinks he will get value for money and this may mean that the dealership will lose customers. Therefore it is important to monitor customers in terms of these variables to maintain market share.
The dealership must make profits to remain afloat. The only way to do that is to have information that makes the dealership come up with strategies that favor it in the marketplace. There is no better way to increase sales than to employ a concept called the marketing concept. This tries to increase sales from the customer needs satisfaction after doing research to ascertain customers’ requirements. This is a complete contrast to the selling concept which advocates for the company to make products and then try to make them saleable to customers through promotion
Role of Marketing Research
This is a study done by a company to ascertain particular needs in the market such as customer characteristics and responses to products. It is very important as it tries to statistically put the variables within management’s position and to know how well to tackle them. Therefore it really helps the management of the automobile seller to know what makes a customer choose a certain car instead of another that is similar. Once that is known the company works towards coming up with strategies that will directly favor that preference. It will also ascertain the degree of that preference in the market to know how economical it is to fulfill it. This will also help to segment the market according to needs (Keller, 2009).
References
Joshi, R. (2005). International Marketing. New Delhi and New York: Oxford University Press.
Keller, K. (2009). A Framework for Marketing Management. Oxford: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Selden, P. (1997). Sales Process Engineering: A Personal Workshop. New York: Milwaukee.