CASE #5 easyCar.com Summary Easycar, rental car company, founded in 2000 on a £10million investment, has grown car rental business. Easycar was a member of the EasyGroup family of companies. Easycar’s differ from traditional rental care companies. They don’t work with intermediaries and started its business with only one vehicle, Mercedes A-class, while all most competitors rented various vehicles. In addition, they provide lower price to customers than their competitors and have several price policies such as returning its car by cleaning from customer, booking service on the website and phone reservation system, small place for parking, and so on. The western European rental car industry consisted of many different national markets that were only semi-integrated. While there were many companies that competed within this European rental car industry, a handful of companies held dominant positions, either across a number of national markets or within one or a few national markets. There were several international companies, Avis, Eurocar, and Hertz, as well as many smaller rental companies operating in this market. Many of these smaller companies operated at only one or a few locations, and were particularly prevalent in tourist locations. There were also a number of brokers operating in the sector, like Holiday Autos. Brokerage companies did not own their own fleet of cars but basically managed the excess inventory of other companies and matched customers with rental companies with excess fleet capacity. The rental car market could be thought of as composed of two board segment: a business and a tourist segment. The business segment is lower than the tourist segment, so it was less price sensitive than the tourist segment and more concerned about service quality, convenience, and flexibility. This case describes company’s facilities, vehicle pickups and return processes, pricing, promotional strategies. Furthermore, It also describes a number of significant changes that the company has made in the last year, including a move to allow rentals for as little as an hour that was designed to position easycar as a competitor to local taxis, buses, trains and even car ownership. The case also explores several legal challenges the firm faced, including a ruling that threatened one of the core elements of its business model. 1. What are the characteristics of the car rental industry? How do these characteristics influence the design of service delivery processes in this industry in general? Characteristics Express Service Convenient locations Ease of booking Friendly user websites Customer pickup Car and size choice
The single most important problem faced by Olympic rent a car is that other competitors, like Enterprise, are aggressively trying to become the leading car rental service by implementing a stronger rewards program. The primary cause of this problem is that Enterprise made a dollar based loyalty program, the fear is that Enterprise will capture more of a business traveler market and take away customers from Olympic. To address this problem the company should match Enterprises loyalty program incentives to target business customers, this will help Olympic stay relevant in the rental market and capture business customers.
He shows that he is contemplative by letting us know that thought long and hard about this topic and that he has done his research prior to writing this article. The assertive tone is brought into this paper when we realize that Clark shows the readers his confidence on his stance throughout the article. He makes certain that the readers know his authority and that he will not back down on his belief that the L. A’s bike-share system is
The business opportunity we will be perusing is renting out motorized scooters to college students. This will appeal to many people because of the savings on gas, convenient parking on campus and the reduction on traffic on and around the universities’ campus. There is currently no competition in this field besides the dealerships themselves selling the scooters. The appeal will come from the low ownership price and reduce cost of ownership because we are leasing and we pay for routine maintenance and registration. We will be able to successfully operate this business because of the following reasons: the demand for cheap and easy transportation on the average college campus, the void currently in affordable ownership for a moped
The characteristics of a service are intangible, inseparable, perishable, heterogeneous and lack ownership. The marketing mix of a service is not perceptible and as the features of a service is distinctive to the features of a product, it has additional elements which are process, people and physical evidence.
They have over 11,555 worldwide rental car locations and are at the point where they can cover their short-term liabilities with cash flow from their operations. Hertz’s adjusted earnings per share increased 77.1% meaning that their market value has increased. Their revenues increased by 34%, while they had a cumulative cost savings of $3 billion (Hertz Annual Report, 2013). This demonstrates that Hertz has the financial resources and the access to markets that they need. Hertz has successfully integrated their ExpressRent kiosks in more than 48 markets and their eReturn option for Hertz Gold loyalty program members, in which they have the ability to choose the Hertz ‘Fuel Purchase Value Option’ that lets them automatically buy a full tank at the start of the rental, so they can turn in the car with the gas at any level and not have to worry about filling up on the way to the
According to Kotler et al (2013), there are four characteristics involved in services that marketers must consider when designing marketing programmes. These include intangibility, perishability, variability and inseparability. These characteristics are vital for producing services and differ to those required for products.
Market: The revolutionary concept certainly provides an alternative to public transport. Furthermore the car sharing concept is really useful for the public in a overcrowded city with limited parking & expensive parking fees. This is clearly not an untouched segment because there are other 2 competitors operating.
Provided the firm is able to successfully focus on its strengths of differentiation in adding value to the customer experience, and can successfully take advantage of opportunities in the global marketplace by focusing on a broader demographic of potential clients, Zipcar may be able to successfully traverse the potential threats from new competitors in the car sharing industry and overcome its weaknesses stemming from technology gaps and limited product offerings. With a history of dramatic levels of growth, Zipcar possesses the momentum to keep moving forward.
Zeithaml, V., Parasuraman, A., & Berry, L. (1990). Delivering quality service: balancing customer perceptions and expectations. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster.
For this project I decided to visit three car dealerships and make my observations. The first dealership that I visited was Westboro Auto Exchange, which is a small used car dealership that sells a variety of cars. The second dealership that I visited was Duddie Ford, which is a large dealership that sells mostly new midrange priced American cars and trucks. The third dealership that I visited was Foreign Motor West, which is an average size dealership that specializes in selling BMWs.
Before National began using the Revenue Management System, it faced the same issues as its competitors. The car rental industry relied heavily on corporate customers that paid fixed rates and only traveled during the week leaving most rental car companies with large fleets of idol cars on the weekends. Whereas the competition was making adjustments to try and capture leisure weekend customers to generate more revenue, National remained solely focused on the business renters missing out on potential opportunities. National also planned its fleet in one-year cycles as opposed to shorter cycles more often, which led to failure in meeting changing customer demand.
(Abelson). There are three major companies, that as (Abelson) states, ‘Control 90% of the Taxi operators in Sydney’. As a result an oligopoly market structure is formed, as there is some competition between these major companies within the Taxi Service industry. However due to ‘allegiances’ (Abelson) that these companies have with each other, they are able to work together creating an almost monopolistic market where they are able to hold some market power without the threat of competing companies taking customers from them as a result of having lower prices. These are however somewhat regulated by the Government as they do influence prices in regards to taxi fares, to...
The effect of deregulation on supply should have provided customers with decreased fares due to the increased numbers of taxis competing for their custom. However in reality this is not true or there would not be people being charged $198 for a 37 kilometre journey (Tait, 2014a). A reason for this is that pre-1989 fares needed to be appr...
McDonalds has always been a leader in the fast food industry. Through its dynamic market expansion, new products and special promotional strategies, it has succeeded in making a name for itself in the minds of the target customers. However, McDonald’s earnings has declined in the late 1990’s and 2000s. This is mainly due to a fiercely competitive industry and variety in customer tastes and preferences.
Market Segmentation, Positioning and targeting for BMW 1.1 Introduction This report aims to examine the market segmentation, positioning and targeting of BMW (automobile company). BMW will be examined giving information about the company and where it is now and any recommendations that we feel are appropriate. 1.2 BMW Company Profile BMW was formed in 1917, from the merger of two small aero engine makers. Their famous blue and white symbol stems from the colours of the Bavarian Luftwaffe and is said to resemble the view of the one of their plane through a propeller. BMW is renowned for its sporty, sophisticated & luxury image which has been built up since the 1970's with many motor sport victories ranging from Touring Car to Formula 1.