Question

The company name is the jeep. and I have chosen jeep wrangler. Macro-environment – give a brief summary of broad trends that bear on the product line’s future.

Demographic trends and its impact on current or potential target markets

Economic trends and its impact on how and what customer spend, and its effect on sales and the company

Natural trends – natural forces/disasters, shortages of raw materials, the impact of the company on the environment

Political trends – laws, regulations, stability, government interventions, barriers to entry/exit etc.

Technological trends – new technologies that can/do affect how the company operates in any way (e.g. online banking, manufacturing technologies, security, social media etc...)

Cultural/social trends – forces that affect how consumers are influenced by society and culture. Include Consumer behaviour theories here (e.g. reference groups, perceptions)

Need to write 600 words by implementing relevant marketing theories.

Answer 1

Understanding the Broad trends including Political, Economic, social, technological, legal and environmental trends which can impact the marketing and sales of Jeep Wrangler

The target audience of Jeep is the young generation who likes to travel long, move and do the adventurous stuff, but the jeep is the only company that has a very mix, customers. They have men, women, poor, rich, urban, rural, every kind of person is driving jeep which you will not find with other vehicles. There is a robust community associated with Jeep who is so deeply associated with the company, they blog about, talk about the product on open forms.

There are changes in the economic trends in the global environment. As companies are moving from developed countries like European countries, USA to developing countries like China, India and that especially in SUV segment because of surging in paying capacity for citizens and love for SUV's have increased. The Youth population is higher in these developing countries and they are more attracted towards the sporty cars, adventurous. The infrastructure issues with the developing countries like India is also a concern so some product changes are also made according to Indian audience making it more compact to cope up with traffic.

Political Trends: The political trends have also impact on the sales of the company. As the trend is going on pollution-free Electric Cars, so government regulations are inclined towards Electric cars which have a negative impact on the SUV cars like Jeep Wrangler.

Technological trends are most important for the Jeep Wrangler and they have well understood as well. They have made lots of changes to improve the handling, better fuel consumption and better suspension for maintaining the company's branding of off-road driving. It is in good accord with Marketing 4P's as their promotion is the fun in offroad driving. Their prices have also been dipped for developing countries and changed very proportionally to the place in presence.

Environmental factors are not much of a concern to the company's robust supply chain as they have the huge amount of resources of truckloads, 300+ internal and external suppliers. They have suppliers from Europe and sophisticated systems are implemented to protect from any natural disaster. Huge logistics units are maintained by a different company and Jeep has the ability to deliver more than 200 deliveries in a day. They have a state of the art material control system well managed by the information system to maintain the whole supply chain system of the company.

Understanding of the consumer behaviour is very much crucial for the marketing and positioning of the brand. As there is a difference in the mindset and culture of European, American and Asian countries. So the product has to be modified according to the requirements and demands of the consumer. If we apply Hofstede cultural model, we can see that developing country people are more price conscious, more concerned towards the fuel efficiency than in Europen and USA. This is well understood by the company and they made certain changes in the model to lure the consumers in these nations.

As most of the young generation are spending most of their time on digital platforms, the company has shifted their marketing to digital platforms. They are using social media to interact with the consumers, which helps to understand their consumer behaviour, perceptions and requirements of their consumers well which they can easily incorporate into their model. Special forums have been developed where consumers can interact with each other with company representatives which makes their consumers loyal to the company and they become brand advocates of the Jeep.