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Consumer Behaviour Individual Assignment: 1 Case Study: Volvo YCC Submitted by: Akshay Sareen: GAPR11MM148 1. As cited in the case, female customers of Volvo’s YCC want performance, prestige and style from their automobiles. Additionally, they want more of the following to be incorporated in its design – smart storage solutions, easy embarkation/ disembarkation, good visibility, personalization, minimal maintenance and easy manoeuvrability for parking. 2.
The case cites an adage which states that ‘if you meet the expectations of women, you’ll exceed the expectations of men’. This is substantiated by two key metrics – 65% of car buying decisions are made by women and 80% of buying decisions are influenced by women. These metrics, along with the fact that 54% of American Volvo buyers are women, strongly suggest that male consumers will respond extremely positively to the innovative design elements as envisaged in the Volvo YCC. . Future concept cars from the Volvo stable could expand its scope beyond addressing consumer needs & usage patterns, to also include the following elements of consumer consumption – how and when is the car primarily used (for instance: to & from office, weekend getaways, grocery shopping etc. , what is the frequency and duration of usage (in terms of mileage), safety, warranty, is the experience of driving a car purely functional or aspirational/ entertainment driven etc, when and how do consumers dispose of their cars (ie. through re-sellers, scrap dealers, swap deals etc. ), and is there any cognitive dissonance prevalent after the purchase is made and before consumption. 4. The CDP model can help in formulating communication and marketing strategies for Volvo’s YCC. The marketing mix should be such that the utomobile’s features satisfies the benefits as visualized by consumers (in the need recognition stage); promotional activities should include those mediums which are most frequently used by consumers (in the information gathering and pre-purchase evaluation stages respectively); channels of distribution employed should be in sync with consumers preferred models (of purchase); value added features such as extended warranties and after sales support to be built into (the consumption stage); and finally customer satisfaction surveys to determine post-consumption and divestment behaviour.
If done in congruence with one another, each level of marketing deployed at different stages of the CDP model can help in attracting, developing, maintaining, retaining and growing customers. 5. As a marketing executive working with a competitor’s firm, I would respond by deploying the following initiatives: a) Changing the frame of the equation by conceptualizing a loss-framed message which conveys to women consumers that the losses incurred far outweigh the gains added by substituting their current car for Volvo’s YCC. ) By increasing the perceived scarcity of my product line (which would cause it to be seen as more valuable and consequently, more desirable). c) Using product endorsers to attract attention and shape consumers’ product opinion. d) Conveying more objective claims (such as actual storage space) via advertising which will evoke a more favourable response about my firm’s automobiles than Volvo’s YCC whose communication is focused only on delivering subjective claims.