Situation Analysis

Volkswagen
Touareg
Das Auto
9 1786 9617
9 6882 7713
9 2072 0473
9 6086 8857

Table of Contents
Company Analysis

Pg. 2‐4

Brand/Product Analysis

Pg. 4‐5

Past and Present Communications

Pg. 5‐6

Target Analysis

Pg. 7

Competitive Analysis

Pg. 7‐9

Market Analysis

Pg. 10

Consumer Analysis

Pg. 10‐11

SWOT Analysis

Pg. 11

Appendix

Pg. 12‐ 25

Works Cited

Pg. 26

1

Company Analysis As one would expect, the history of Volkswagen began in Germany. In fact, on February 11, 1933, Adolf Hitler, the new Chancellor of Germany ,announced his plan for the “motorization” of Germany at the Berlin Auto
Show. Volkswagen was founded in 1937 with the help of German engineer Ferdinand Porsche, who wanted to design a small, sleek, low‐priced car with a rear engine and air‐cooled capabilities that could hold up to five people
(Bernstein).
During the war however, the Volkswagen factory was destroyed by bombs. After temporary British occupancy from 1945 to 1949, the company finally came under control of the German federal government. Heinz Nordhoff became the new head of the company and really initiated the recovery of Volkswagen. Foreign expansion was the next step, although success came slowly, as Volkswagen was unsuccessfully launched in the United States in
1949. It was not until 1959, when Doyle Dane Bernbach’s firm took over the advertising for the company and introduced the name “Beetle” for the car, that its success really picked up (“Funding Universe”). Ironically, the success stemmed from its flaws, from award‐winning advertisements with slogans like “Think Small” and “Ugly Is
Only Skin‐Deep.” Changes were also made internally, as the Volkswagen became known for its durability. The Beetle eventually had a record production run of over 40 years, during which over 20 million cars were produced, making it the best selling car in the world. During the 1960s, the Volkswagen Beetle (along with the microbus), became a counterculture symbol in America and helped imports to gain a crucial foothold in the American market for the first time. In 1965, shortly after the company was renamed Volkswagenwerk AG, it acquired Auto Union GmbH from Daimler‐Benz, thereby gaining the Audi make. In 1974, after Kurt Lotz took over as chairman, Volkswagen almost went bankrupt, due to diminishing sales, rising labor costs, increasing competition from Japanese automakers, and the end of fixed exchange rates (“Funding Universe”). The 1980s and early 1990s proved to have some highs and lows, with some early major job cuts prior to the
1982 adjustment to yet another chairman, Carl H. Hahn. The new Golf, which had a larger engine, more interior space, and better overall performance earned ‘Car of the Year’ in 1985, the same year that the company changed its name to Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft. In 1990, Volkswagen gained full control of Spain’s Sociedad Espanola de Automobiles del Turismo S.A. (SEAT). Hahn had a plan to broaden the company’s geographic scope, although it included capital spending and cost‐cutting measures. By 1992, Volkswagen had risen from fourth to first place in the European market share. Ferdinand Piech was the next to gain control of Volkswagen in 1993. After a rocky start, Volkswagen returned to modest profitability and began to steadily rise again in the market again due to a strong focus on cost cutting and a re‐energized lineup of models. Volkswagen had previously used 16 platforms (the parts of a car that differentiate it in the eye of a consumer) in the early 1990s, but Piech had managed by the turn of the century to whittle that down to four for the main company brands: VW, Audi, Seat, and Skoda. This strategy was credited with saving Volkswagen billions of dollars during this period. By