Land Rover North America, Inc. Case Analysis

Land Rover North America, Inc. Case Analysis

I. Executive Summary

Charles Hughes, president and CEO of Land Rover North America (LRNA), and his executive committee want to expand LRNA's reach within North America. Based on the growing strength of the U.S. SUV market, research which suggests consumers are seeking vehicles that can help them have "experiences" while being practical, safe, reliable and luxurious, the success of the Discovery in the U.K. and near doubling of the Land Rover brand worldwide, LNRA is seeking to become the "world's premier 4x4 specialty company" through effective brand, product and retail strategies. LNRA's success hinges on making the correct positioning, marketing mix and retailing decisions.

II. Problems and Recommendations

LRNA needs to determine a positioning strategy for the Discovery and itself in North America to entice its two distinct target markets. LRNA is aware that it has two distinct target markets whose purchasing decisions are impacted by various drivers but also knows that factors such as quality, safety, reliability, comfort, off-road capability and aesthetics overlap. When compared with other SUVs or SUV alternatives, we believe the following differences should be highlighted to develop a distinctive niche for the Discovery and Land Rover brand in the target audience's mind. The Discovery and Land Rover brand should be positioned as luxury car alternatives with rich histories and superb off-road capabilities designed for the crÐ"Ёme-de-la-crÐ"Ёme of consumers: affluent, intelligent, practical, unique, full of character, and seeking to empower themselves through adventure and exploration during their driving experiences. The Discovery and Land Rover brand should, in effect, convey the following message: you are what you drive.

LRNA must also determine what marketing mix to utilize and how much of its marketing budget should be allocated to each media strategy. First, we would advocate increasing the marketing budget to approximately $30 million to better position LRNA against our competitors. Since our target consumers are educated, married males in the 35-64 age group with annual incomes of $100K or above, we would suggest allocating sixty percent of our budget to advertising through television and print ads with a 65-35 split between the two. Ads should present the dual nature of the Discovery and Land Rover brand as rugged, exciting, but safe vehicles equally adept at handling the challenge of the jungles of Madagascar and the challenge of the city highway with your children onboard. Print ads would be placed in business and news magazines as well as national newspapers such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and Washington Post. We would stress corporate advertising of the Land Rover brand as opposed to individual models to increase overall brand awareness.

The remainder of the marketing budget would be split between corporate sponsorship, pr activities and experience marketing. We would recommend continued sponsorship of the Camel Trophy and the "La Ruta