Have Luxury Automotive Brands Missed the Turn with Minority Groups?
Social media helps businesses build their brand and better communicate a message with customers. If they fail to engage certain groups, the message they communicate may be that they don’t care about them. Some auto manufactures have embraced the idea of targeting minority groups such as African-Americans, Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans, whereas other have not.
Minorities in the U.S. represent 92 percent of the population growth, and are also growing in purchasing power. With this growth, luxury automotive manufactures need to build relationships with these minority groups today. Fortunately for some of these brands, they have entry-level sister brands that upwardly moving minorities can connect with first and later graduate to the luxury model. For example, many car buyers will start with Toyota and buy a Lexus later in life, Nissan then Infinity, Ford then Lincoln, or VW then Audi.
According to Business2Community, Toyota Motor Company has enjoyed a long history of success with the Hispanic market. In fact, Toyota has been the top-selling brand for Hispanics for over 10 years. In addition to building great vehicles, they also do a great job of connecting to the Hispanic market with social media, specifically with the Toyota Latinoamerica Facebook page with 308,397 likes. Social Media Today indicates that many Latino Americans speak both Spanish and English, therefore the site content is primarily Spanish but some announcements appear in English. Toyota uploads much of the imagery to maintain a professional look, and also allows fans to also contribute to the page.
https://www.facebook.com/ToyotaLatinoamerica/photos/?tab=album&album_id=205374826180721
Some luxury brands like Mercedes, BMW, and Porsche do not have entry-level brands. Therefore, they need to directly make connections and build relationships with these emerging customers. An article in the Drum states that Porsche has focused its digital strategy on social media (Facebook) with the goal to build the business and interact with customers/fans. Unfortunately the Porsche Facebook site fails to engage minorities.
Have Luxury Automotive Brands Missed the Turn with Minority Groups?
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sfschaible
Hi Bill,
Excellent analysis. Working for a tier-one automotive supplier, I’m partial to exploring automotive marketing.
To answer your question, I don’t think it’s too late for luxury brands to explore the power of America’s top three multicultural groups. “As multicultural consumers continue growth in size and spending power, brands will increasingly need to integrate multicultural insights into core business strategies.,” shared a Nielsen report. As Nielsen indicates, the growth of these target markets is not going away and they will continue to emerge as top consumers in the country. Now is the time for these luxury brands to step in and take action.
Exploration of the consumers’ mobile and emerging media use will lead them to ways to best position the advantages and technical attributes of luxury vehicles opposed to economical vehicles. Especially as millennials are coming of age in the workforce and increasing their buying power within these ethnic groups, there is huge potential and a future for luxury brands. Deep research into current and projected trends will help luxury brands make their market with these target consumers.
Do you think that the behaviors of millennials within the three multicultural groups show promise for luxury brands or do you think their more reserved and social behaviors could lead to more economical purchase decisions?
Thanks,
Sarah
brohardblog
Sarah,
Great question! An article in Forbes indicates that millennial are not a risk taking generation and the recession has impacted their views on luxury consumption. They are more concerned with reliability than showing off. More than two thirds of millennials would prefer a trip around the world than a new, fully-loaded luxury car. Luxury brands will have appeal to this group with modestly priced luxury sub-compacts.
The full Forbes article can be found at:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaclyntrop/2016/04/29/these-are-the-most-popular-car-brands-for-millennials/#471148e94149