Marketing Channel for Saturn Motor Corporation Case Study

Marketing Channel for Saturn Motor Corporation - Case Study Example This paper illustrates that in order to market their products, Saturn targeted the working group of people, i.e. 18-49-year-old graduates from college; white collar job workers whose salaries exceeded $35,000 annually; and older women. It adopted an innovative approach to its marketing strategy by integrating technology, consumer ideas, and business systems into making quality low-cost vehicles that satisfied the customers. It's pricing policy of not haggle, and marketing strategy of bonding consumers to the company and extensive advertisements ensured a steady consumer supply due to its friendly approach. Utilizing the "market area approach" to assign geographical supply areas to retailers and promotion of brand loyalty through the use of names of cities helped to cultivate consumer specific approaches that reflected the needs of consumers from different environmental areas. Empowering the dealers to relate their suggestions to important decisions of the company assists the company to make important decisions for consumer satisfaction and dealer effectiveness. All dealers are trained in leadership in transacting, resolution of conflicts, listening assertively and organizational behavior on recruitment to enable maintenance of dealer organization whose aim is customer satisfaction. Restricting owner's name from appearing in the dealership may also place a huddle in the marketing channel since some of the dealers might have big names that some of the customers may wish to relate to. Opportunities Saturn can relax their strategy of no-haggle to incorporate bargaining to cater for the customers who may be more attracted to this strategy hence attract more customers. They can increase their customer base and target other people outside their age limiting brackets thus increase the number of their customers. They can apply some of the channeling strategies used by other successful auto dealers in their own strategies in order to compete effectively. Threats Competit ion from the Japanese; foreign manufacturers and other automobile companies especially those whose standards are flexible to accommodate various customer and dealer preferences. Banks may require a lot of conditions before they can offer loans to the company. These conditions may prove hard for the company to meet thus banks may end up delaying money to be used in market channeling or refuse to loan it at all thus causing great inconveniences. Misrepresentation of Saturn's products by the media companies may threaten the reception of the products by the people. Marketing Channel Strategy The target markets usually adopts ways through which they would wish products to be sold hence, designing consumer-friendly strategies involves giving an ear to the demands of the consumers and giving their suggestions as inputs in the