Marketing Research of New Balance : New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc. (NBAS), best known as simply New Balance, is a footwear manufacturer based in Boston, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1906 as the New Balance Arch Support Company. Eschewing expensive advertising campaigns, it has nevertheless grown to be one of the largest makers of sports footwear in the world.
New Balance is notable in that it has continued to maintain a manufacturing presence in the United States as well as in the United Kingdom for the European market—in contrast to its competitors in the same market space, such as Nike and Adidas, who design products in the US and Europe, but purchase the majority of their Footwear and Apparel from manufacturers in China, Vietnam, and other developing nations. The result of this corporate decision is that the shoes tend to be more expensive than New Balance's competitors. To offset this pricing discrepancy, New Balance differentiates their products with technical innovations, such as a blend of gel inserts, heel counters, and a greater selection of sizes, particularly for very narrow and/or very wide widths.

Location-based services offer marketers enticing opportunities to connect with their targets in more relevant and meaningful ways, but uptake has been cautious.
Usage surged last year—according to SNL Kagan, the number of US users nearly tripled in 2010—but just 4% of online Americans participate in location-sharing services, found the Pew Internet & American Life Project in November.

A December 2010 Microsoft survey conducted by Cross-Tab Marketing Services in Canada, Germany, Japan, the UK and US found that overall, about six in 10 internet users were aware of location-based services and just over half had used them.

Most common were map and weather applications—just 18% had used a service to share their location with others.

Usage varied widely with demographics. Unsurprisingly for a relatively new trend, younger respondents were more likely to be aware of and familiar with location-based services, and were also most likely to use the services themselves.



Within the 18 to 34 group, men were also more informed about and active with location-based services than women.



One major source for the differences in use between the genders is privacy concerns. Most respondents—including men and women of all ages—were worried about a variety of privacy issues, including identity theft, accidental location-sharing when they did not mean to opt in, other security problems, stalking and harassment.

But across the board, women were significantly more worried than men. Fully 77% of female respondents were concerned about stalking, for example, compared with 60% of men. Webroot reported similar findings in summer 2010.
manufacturers include the following:

Passenger cars including SUVs, this is the largest segment.
Commercial vehicles; light as well as heavy trucks
Construction related vehicles, such as earth movers, bulldozers & so on.
Farm vehicles, such as tractors, harvester combines, lawn mowers etc.
Entertainment vehicles such as dune buggies etc.
Component manufacturers and other ancillary industries supply components and parts required by the OEM companies. 3PL or the third party logistics companies maintain the supply chain between the component makers and the OEMs. Then there are industries that depend directly on the availability of autos. Rental industry is the foremost among them. Replacement parts particularly tires are a regular requirement of vehicles in use.

Pre-owned car market depends on the vehicles discarded by the original owners. These people do change their vehicles quite often. Then finally the large volume of vehicles that cannot be used any more are fed into the recycling industry that recover the metal, plastics and other material from the discarded vehicles. Car insurance providers are part of the service industries related to the vehicle use. Lastly of course, the gas supplying companies are another important part of the eco-system keeping the huge number of vehicles running.

Since it is impossible to cover all aspects of such a large and diverse kind of industry, the prime focus here would be on passenger vehicles only. Key Source:Accenture

Market Structure
The automobile market is dominated by a few very large companies. Besides the U.S., Japan has been a leading supplier of passenger vehicles worldwide. Daimler-Chrysler is a German company that is also a leading company.

The leaders between them hold a total market of more than $900 billion. 7 companies as follows are the leaders in order shown.

1. General Motors
2. Daimler-Chrysler
3. Toyota
4. Ford
5. Volkswagen AG
6. Honda
7. Nissan
This is for the new cars alone. Components and ancillaries represent a market of similar dimensions. Just the rental business alone generated a revenue of $17 billion in 2004 in the U.S. That is a clear indication of the size of vehicle population and corresponding replacement parts and tires market size.

Key Sources:Duke University and Fleet Central

Industry Definitions
OEM: Original equipment manufacturers, the car makers.
Ancillary industry: Collection of companies that produce parts and components for the OEMs.
3PL: Third party logistics. Companies that move component products to the main manufacturers. These are independent operators rather than the component manufacturers.
Market Metrics
Global sales of light vehicle in terms of number of units is represented below. What’s interesting to note here is that the South Korean company Hyundai has started making headway in the global market.


While GM is still the leaders in terms of number of vehicles sold, Toyota is close on its trail. They also have a high quality reputation and unless something is done by GM they could possibly overtake GM very soon.


Total revenues and net income numbers are indicated in the following chart. GM and Ford’s income numbers have been declining. Daimler Chrysler has positive income. Toyota has the best numbers followed by other Japanese manufacturers Honda and Nissan. All these companies have a healthy bottom line corresponding to their top lines.


U.S. rankings of companies in the “motor vehicles and parts” category is as follows.

Company Revenue($ billions)

1 General Motors 207.349
2 Ford Motor 160.126
3 Johnson Controls 32.413
4 Delphi 26.392
5 Goodyear Tire & Rubber 20.258
Key source: Fortune Magazine

The market share of the big three of the U.S. has been under pressure in the last few years. Competition is not only from cost efficient manufacturers from Japan but also from their plants in the U.S. Manufacturers like Toyota and Honda are able to respond to dual trends of providing cheaper cars in the same segment as also providing more luxurious cars for similar prices. Toyota’s quality reputation is legendary. Their lean production system has made producing cars in U.S. very efficient.

Industry Players
General Motors Corporation - Employing 335,000 people, GM is the largest vehicle manufacturer in the world. It is headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, but it has operations in roughly 55 countries outside the U.S. and Canada. GM owns other manufacturers, including Chevrolet, Pontiac, and Hummer. General Motors

DaimlerChrysler AG - DaimlerChrysler produces everything from sports cars to utility trucks. It is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, and primarily operates in the U.S. and Western Europe. DaimlerChrysler

Toyota Motor Corporation - Toyota is the epitome of a worldwide company, selling vehicles in more than 170 countries and regions. It is headquartered in Toyota City, Japan, and employs approximately 285,980 people. Toyota

Ford Motor Company - Ford's brands include Lincoln, Mercury, Jaguar, and Volvo. The company manufactures and distributes automobiles across six continents. It primarily operates in the U.S. and Europe, and it is headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan. Ford Motor Company

Recent Trends and Developments
The common trend of manufacturing moving to lower cost centers is seen in this industry too. The same new manufacturing nations are also hot economic growth engines making them a large and very fast growing consumer market too.

Car GPS and navigation systems are certainly destined to become the FM radios of the old days. While the trend started with premium segment of the cars, it has already reached the mid-segment and is poised to become a commodity offering soon. Same goes for prime quality sound systems. With the development of mobile technology it is just a question of time before video feeds to these moving platforms become main-stream.

Other significant trend is, after years of discussing about fuel efficiency the push is on to find solutions as petroleum prices hover around the $100 per barrel figure. Some of the new hybrid cars, Prius of Toyota in particular, seem to have caught the fancy of consumers. Lot more activity is going to be seen in this area. Fuel cells that are expected to supply power to such vehicles is going to a very hot area of activity.
 
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