the report is already done and perfected all i need is to link /relate /sync the lessons and objectives as much as possible but more importantly the lesson titles into the report itself all required lessons and objectives are at the bottom of the page as provided.

 

Introduction

Toyota Introducing a Hybrid Scion Car Targeted To 18-29-Year-Olds

Toyota is a renowned Japanese car manufacturing company that manufactures quality cars at almost half the price of its competitors. The company has subsidiaries and dealerships across the world. The giant car manufacturer has different car market niches that it targets with its various car models and designs. It has on several occasions won the world's best car and engine awards and lauded from across the demographic divide for putting everyone's needs into production. This has led the Japanese car maker to listen to the needs of the younger generation of having a car that augurs well with their tastes and preferences. In response to this, Toyota introduced a production design of a car focused on the younger generation. In the year 2000, the first Scion car was produced. Any other carmaker did not explore this market niche before and so it posed a great opportunity for Toyota. The car was a resounding success and accolades were received in Toyota. As years went by, the sales started dropping and Toyota faced a challenge of redesigning the brand before it could get out of the market (Halvorson, 2016). This led to a market survey as to the current needs of the customer and an idea to produce a hybrid Scion variant was brought up. In this article, the idea is explored further and a market analysis is conducted to prove whether such an idea could change the downward trajectory of Scion sales and save the brand from going out of the market.

 

 

 

 

Marketing Opportunity

Why the Scion

Over the past decade, the Scion brand has been promoted as the car for the younger generation. It has been positioned in the market and billions of dollars have gone into research and development of this iconic car. The compact design and the flashy colours of the variants in the brand have not only augmented well with the younger generation but it has also been evident in sales. The Scion brand created an appeal for the young because it was customisable and quirky (Woodyard, 2013). This was a strong point in pushing the sales up for the Scion. The only other car that shared this characteristic was the supra whose production was discontinued by leaving the stage for the Scion. The Scion also launched a performance version the ‘FR-S’ (Woodyard, 2013), which created much appeal to the performance enthusiasts in the niche and even drew the attention of the much older generation performance enthusiast.

 

Why Young People?

The passion for style and uniqueness and the love for performance are the greatest pointers that advised Toyota into the production of the Scion. In its survey, it emerged that the younger generation is a lover of style. Coupled with the enthusiasm of owning their first car, the Scion focused on creating an appeal that every young person looking to own their first car would fall for. Consideration of the fact that this niche was composed of people who did not have families was a good point for Toyota to build a compact car brand. Toyota also created publicity for the brand by introducing its own record label that released music for free to its customers. This alone endeared many young people as it is identified by their love for music. Young people also love online shopping because of the simplicity (Undercoffler & Lutz, 2015). Toyota also incorporated the online buying option for the brand to endear it more to the market segment.

 

The Risks Involved

Toyota also considered the risks involved in their target customers coupled with their marketing strategy to identify the limitations that could be encountered. Some of the risks are as follows;

1-     Lack of disposable income. It was established that one of the major limitations was the lack of capital a young person having just cleared the college would put into purchasing the car. This made Toyota incorporate the credit purchase option as one of the options available to the customers. To further this idea, Toyota introduced the mentoring and business incubator program that was geared towards encouraging young entrepreneurs and creating opportunities for them.

 

 

2-     Rejection from the older people in the target group. The initial plan of Toyota targeting a clientele aged 18-24 did not augur well with the older people interested in purchasing the Scion. This made the automaker to push the scope of the age to 34 years. This would ensure no one in their youth was locked out by the campaign.

 

 

3-     Biased campaign. Toyota had chosen to use the term ‘Zeus’ to campaign for the Scion to capture the older people in the new market niche of 18-34 years (Halpert, 2011). Zeus was a name of a Greek god and the fictional character that it portrayed could not be related to by the customers. This made Scion change the name for the tagline ‘what moves you’ that portrayed the Scion as a brand (Thomaselli, 2012). Promotion of this brand used real people and real stories, unlike the Zeus promotion that used fictional characters.

 

 

4-     Change in consumer preferences and demographics.  As the times change so do the people. The need to plan for the change in customer preferences could not be overemphasised. Scion needed to plan for this change and consider the customer changes in tastes and preferences. This is one of the major factors that made the Scion brand to consider producing a hybrid version of the car. This would align the preferences of the people to the kind of a car available to them ensuring that the target market is maintained.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Strategies of Marketing the Scion Hybrid

Being a new product in the market, the Scion hybrid brand demanded a lot of marketing from the project team. This was a revolutionary idea that many automakers were conceptualizing and would require Toyota to carry it out in a way that would make it remain the market leader. Maintaining the recording label would be a good idea and skew towards creating awareness for the new hybrid variant. Personalizing the car further would offer more mileage and in a way capture more detail and appeal for the youths. Evolution of the social media presents an excellent medium for advertising the new variant because it is generally identifiable with the youth (Undercoffler & Lutz, 2015). Television adverts too could create more awareness of the product and increase the target market.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Existing Market Information of the Scion

 

Flopping Sales

Toyota the Scion sales have been falling for the past decade (Rechtin, 2014). This could be attributed to the various challenges like the change of preferences, for example, in the target market niche. Competition would be another factor that caused the sales of the Scion to fall. This necessitates a change of strategy to increase the sales and restore the fading success that it once enjoyed.

 

Rejection from Corporations

The Scion has experienced rejection from the corporations as an impractical car. Featuring the FR-S which was a two-door coupe and lack of a Sports utility vehicle (SUV) in the Scion lineage drew criticism from Toyotas corporate customers (Woodyard, 2013). Toyota has countered this criticism by introducing a hatchback ‘Scion iM’ and a saloon ‘Scion iA’ into the Scion lineage.

 

 

 

Iconic Sales over a Decade

The Scion enjoyed iconic sales when it was launched. According to Thomaselli  (2012), the sales hit a record high of 173000 cars in 2006. This plummeted to just 45000 units in the year 2010. This sharp decline in sales shows the kind of work that requires being done to restore the lost sales.

 

The Introduction of the Scion FR-S

The Scion FR-S was introduced to meet the needs of the performance and customisation enthusiasts. Toyota discovered the need of the young people who desired a vehicle designed for performance and a car they could specify the customisations they needed to be done to it. In response to this, the company developed the FR-s which suited the need. According to Woodyard (2013), the FR-s had sold 1350 cars in December 2012 alone. This presented a major boost for the Scion brand.

 

Tagline Change

As discussed, the Scion changed its tagline from the ‘Zeus’ to ‘What moves you’ to augur well in the advertisements and also to remove the fictional character that viewers did not identify with and replace it with real people in a real world (Thomaselli, 2012). The new tagline was believed not only to be more emotional and gender-neutral and far much more mature. This was predominantly so in the social-media circles.

Consumer Interview and Findings

The idea of building the Scion hybrid was a far-fetched idea that the Scion brand hoped that it would rejuvenate its sales and restore the brand’s former dominance. This necessitated an interview to find the consumer preferences and feedback in regard to the hybrid. The interview was conducted on a niche of performance enthusiasts who had a passion for customised vehicles and garage owners who had a wide knowledge of their client’s preferences and dislikes on cars. The interview was conducted as an oral interview. Several factors came up during the interview as addressed below.

 

Hybrid Option

The customers viewed this as a good move by the Scion and that it would present a new opportunity to save on the cost of fuel, especially during the ongoing hard economic period. The move also received approval from the customers with a feeling that it would help with protecting the environment more from emissions. The move received criticism from some of the performance enthusiasts as to the kind of power the hybrid engine would produce compared to the petrol variant.

 

 

Retail Price Consideration

Being a superior technology to the petrol variant, the hybrid variant raised questions as to how affordable the car would be. This was in consideration that it was targeted for the younger customers in the market. The customers alleged fears that the car could be too expensive for them making the idea unreasonable.

 

Compact Sports Utility Vehicle Needed in the Lineage

Suggestions to have a sports utility vehicle (SUV) in the Scion lineage were raised so as to encompass enthusiast that were more inclined to SUVs. This move would ensure a greater footprint in the market for the Scion brand.

 

High-Performance Vehicle Needed

Customers also raised the suggestion of the need for a hybrid to increasing the current performance output of the petrol variants. This would be in line with their performance needs and would make the hybrid Scion a car of their choice.

 

 

 

 

Recommendations

The Scion brand is still a strong brand and with a few changes and adjustments, the brand would restore its former greatness. The recommendations were greatly drawn from the customer experience and response are as below;

 

·        Introduce a sports utility vehicle in the Scion family. This would ensure tapping the market segment that remains untapped and expanding the territory of the Scion.

 

 

·        Introduce an all-wheel drive Scion FR-S hybrid. This suggestion came from the performance enthusiast that criticised the current FR-S architecture as underperforming. The need to add performance to it was on the top of their priorities and were not much bothered by the cost it would involve doing so.

 

 

·        Retain all the petrol variants for customers to have variety. The introduction of the hybrid should not bring to an end the petrol variants. Consumers felt the need to have both the petrol and the hybrid versions in production to expand their options.

 

 

 

·        Increase dealerships and agents to increase sales and services. It was argued that the current dealerships and agents were not enough. To push the sales and customer satisfaction through services higher, there is a need to increase the number of dealers and agents. This would also help in the marketing of the new hybrid when production begins.

 

 

·        Provide the hybrid under the credit plan. Consumers felt that the hybrid might come with a higher price tag compared to what they pay for the current Scions. In response to this, the company should offer credit arrangement plan to counter the high price tag issue that the hybrid would present.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

Still viewed as a strong brand, the Scion has a potential to turn around the sales. The customer complaints were not major. The brand could change few things on its products and claim back its market niche. The hybrid was viewed as a great opportunity to push the sales figures up. In this respect to this, a hybrid option would be a good move by the Scion team to return the brand to the greatness it once enjoyed

 

 

lessons and their titles / objectives

 

>Buying, Having, Being

objectives : 1. Consumer behavior is a process. 2. Marketers need to understand the wants and needs of different consumer segments. 3. Our choices as consumers relate in powerful ways to the rest of our lives. 4. Our motivations to consume are complex and varied. 5. Technology and culture create a new “always on” consumer. 6. Many different types of specialists study consumer behavior. 7. There are differing perspectives regarding how and what we should understand about consumer behavior.  

 

>Decision Making

objectives : 1. The three categories of consumer decision-making are cognitive, habitual, and affective. 2. A cognitive purchase decision is the outcome of a series of stages that results in the selection of one product over competing options.3. We often fall back on well-learned “rulesof-thumb” to make decisions. 4. We make some decisions on the basis of an emotional reaction rather than as the outcome of a rational thought process.

 

>Buying and Disposing

objectives : 1. Many factors at the time of purchase dramatically influence the consumer decision-making process. 2. The information a store’s layout, Web site, or salespeople provides strongly influences a purchase decision. 3. Other people and groups, especially those that possess social power, influence our decisions. 4. We seek out others who share our interests in products or services. 5. Our desire to be consistent with other people motivates us to mimic what they buy and use. 6. Marketers often need to understand consumers’ behavior rather than a consumer’s behavior. 7. The decision-making process differs when people choose what to buy on behalf of an organization rather than for personal use. 8. Our traditional notions about families are outdated. 9. Members of a family unit play different roles and have different amounts of influence when the family makes purchase decisions. 

 

>Consumer Identity II: Social Class & Lifestyles

objectives : 1. Our confidence in our future, as well as in the overall economy, determines how freely we spend and the types of products we buy. 2. We group consumers into social classes that say a lot about where they stand in society. 3. Individuals’ desire to make a statement about their social class, or the class to which they hope to belong, influences the products they like and dislike. 4. A lifestyle defines a pattern of consumption that reflects a person’s choices of how to spend his or her time and money, and these choices are essential to define consumer identity. 5. Identifying patterns of consumption can be more useful than knowing about individual purchases when organizations craft a lifestyle marketing strategy. 6. Psychographics go beyond simple demographics to help marketers understand and reach different consumer segments.