MARKETING STRATEGY FOR THE TOYOTA PRIUS IN BRAZIL

Marketing Strategy for the Toyota Prius in Brazil

Marketing Strategy for the Toyota Prius in Brazil

Introduction

As we have been asked to develop an integrated two-year communication plan for Prius, this plan will then focus on the launch of Prius in the Brazil automobile market. The budget has been set at $4m (Data monitor, 2008).

Traditionally, single car dealers are responsible for local advertising and the promotion of their special offers. However, most manufacturers today create and support national brand image and advertising campaigns. Accordingly, this campaign is designed for the Brazil national market (Data monitor, 2008).

Review of Marketing Plan

This section will briefly review some key points in our marketing plan that is highly related to our marketing communication brief. Our brief is designed to integrate with the strategic marketing objectives, namely, to create and become the market leader of hybrid-automotive car producers in the Brazil automobile market (niche market strategy and first mover strategy).

In pursue of achieving the marketing objective, our communication aim is to redefine the benchmark of the automobile industry, which consumers and producers (consciously or subconsciously) used to evaluate the performance of cars. Our main approach to accomplish this aim is to setup a new product category in the automotive market, known as the hybrid category, and become the market leader in such category (Atrill, 2003).

Company profile & Product Analysis

Toyota Prius is formally falls into the automotive passenger motor sector (PMV) which is defined as follows: 'The car sector of the motor industry covers private cars of all descriptions and engine capacities, regardless the type of fuel, providing that they conform to all the regulations for road use and are defined specifically to carry people.'

The Brazilian PMV industry consists of four car manufacturers and more than 200 component, tooling, design and engineering firms. These manufacturers are largely based in Victoria and South Brazil, with small share of activities in New South Wales. The four motor vehicle manufacturers are Toyota, Ford, Holden, and Mitsubishi. Toyota and the others are all wholly owned by foreign companies (Grant, 2003).

In 2002, the above motor vehicle producers manufactured almost 360,000 motor vehicles in Brazil. In 2003, a total of 909,811 motor vehicles were sold on the Brazilian market. This was a new record, surpassing the previous record of 824,309 set in 2002 by 10.4 per cent. Domestic sales of Brazilian made passenger motor vehicles and derivatives totaled 276,462 vehicles, or 30.4 per cent of the total Brazilian motor vehicle market (Honda, 2004).

The current market trend in recent years is that the price and volume of passenger motor vehicles are stable and there is a sign that shows a decreasing demand for new cars. Partly, this is caused by the increase in price sensitivity of consumers, and the demand for lower price from the fleet and government market. This has lead to a lower volume of sales and the decrease in price.

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