GSBA 520 Week 12 Assignment 01: Marketing Case Study | Eileen Urrutia

Do you agree with VW’s corporate brand positioning in India? Is it effective? Why or why

not?

I see that VW was very successful in their corporate brand positioning and seemed to be

effective, however, I do not agree with it because their research seemed to be incredibly sexist.

From my knowledge, women are allowed to drive in India and are about 46% of the workforce.

(“Census of India: Economic Activity,” n.d.). The research, in this case, seemed to focus only on

men, “There is a lot of boredom that sets into the life of a sober man…he brings change through

two things—car and mobile. Those are his mistresses” (Gupta, 2013). Although VW focused

their research on men only, I did not see any specific features of any of the Volkswagen cars that

would benefit men. I understand they did identify female consumers in their segments and

advertisements, but I was curious why they were not mentioned in their research at the beginning

of the case.

Do you agree with VW’s positioning with respect to the other two brands in the VW

Group’s portfolio in India – Volkswagen, Skoda, and Audi? How can VW avoid

cannibalization?

VW’s positioning of the other brands was very effective in avoiding cannibalization.

Seema Gupta describes in his case how, “Despite sharing common product platforms, the three

brands were distinctly positioned” (Gupta, 2013.) He continues, “Skoda was positioned as less

premium than VW…Audi was positioned at par with BMW and Mercedes in the luxury

category.” This was done cleverly by VW to avoid their own products being in competition with

each other. VW is producing products under different brands so consumers of every

demographic can buy any one of the products they offer. VW produced their cars to be in
competition with other brands such as BMW and Mercedes, and still produce a car like Skoda

that is less luxurious for the consumers who cannot afford an Audi or a VW. VW avoids

cannibalization by integrating its resources such as, “back-end of technology, human resource,

and finance across the three brands,” while keeping the front-end dealers, where consumers buy

the cars, separate. (Gupta, 2013).

Do you agree with VW’s segmentation strategy in this case? Why or why not?

VW was extremely creative in how they targeted their segments, new middle class, new

business builders, the young progressives, modern urban elite, and metropolitan smart, which

together constituted 46% of the total market because they had a clear idea of who their audience

would be for their advertising (Gupta, 2013). By understanding who they would target, DDB

would come up with creative ways to market to those specific segments. Most of the people in

those segments were working in tech or were CEO’s or had higher incomes, so DDB knew how

to advertise their products and for what price the segments were willing to pay given their

income. I do agree VW’s segmentation strategy was a successful one as they engineered more

than one product and advertised them all differently according to demographic and using the

distinct features of each one. They understood that consumers are different, and they have

different styles, so VW worked on not being so monolithic.

How does VW Indian advertising compare with its global advertising? In your opinion,

has VW done an effective job of “tailoring” their advertising to the Indian market?

VW did a good job in understanding India’s culture and tailoring their advertising on the

Indian market. You can tell through a few ways, such as how they identified car advertising was

very cluttered, so they advertised heavily in the newspaper. Another way was how they targeted

fashionable women in their Beetle campaign, “Curves are back” (Gupta, 2013). I think it was
interesting how they tailored the advertising of each car to each segment. For example, the

Beetle campaign to the female audience, or the Polo campaign for the young progressive male

with ads like “road handling, ground clearance, and fuel efficiency to test” (Gupta, 2013). Again,

VW was successful in learning about the different segments and understanding they were

different, so consumers want different features in their products, VW advertised to the different

segments as such.

Based on what you know about their marketing strategy from this case, do you believe that

VW can be among the top 3 brands by 2018?

VW did a good job of being creative and advertising the different features of the different

segments of their chosen market. VW’s strength is that they make good use of their research and

how to advertise to the different segments. VW was smart in advertising to the different

segments using different ideas like the dummy Touareg outside the building and garnering buzz

by cutting out the Polo shaped hole in the Times of India. If they continue to innovate and

advertise creatively to different markets, VW does have the potential of being in the Top 3, if it

hasn’t already.