Zipcar
1) Zipcar is a model of car rental where people rent cars for limited amount of hours. Car sharing is good for customers who make occasional use of a car. Demographics is important because it is important to identify the consumer; and the customer that utilizes the car sharing is mostly found in urban cities like, Boston, NYC, San Francisco and Washington DC.
Positive Element: The technological segment is important because the industry has technological key feature developed to allow easy access for customers without compromising security of the vehicles.
Negative Element: Fleet operation consumes over 50% of the revenues.
2) Bargaining Power of Suppliers: High- Natural disaster in Japan are expected to raise Zipcar’s cost as both Honda and Toyota are experiencing supply shortage s and manufacturing delays. Also the owner of Hertz, Ford may show pricing power to competitors.
Moderate: Zipcar or the industry has a challenge of finding, keeping affordable and convenient parking for its vehicles.
Low: The Company has a lot of industry rivals but there’s a limited demographic that may already be tapped.
3) Two major competitors of the industry are Hertz and Zipcar. Hertz is now focused on expansion into international market including Russia and the Middle East. Zipcar is also a viable competitor because purchased Streetcar limited in UK which will help expand to the European consumer.
4) Superior: Zipcar run by Steven Case who is called “one of the nation’s greatest entrepreneurs” who’s very well seasoned and has a diverse experience; which means the company has great human resources as opposed to the other competitors in the industry.
Inferior: Zipcar has good distribution but the fact that affordable and convenient parking is a challenge is not very good because the other competitors don’t have that problem.
Neutral: The Company has a low cost word of mouth marketing which means it doesn’t spend as much resources as the other competitors
5) In the first quarter of 2011 fleet operations consumed 71.2% of revenues but Zipcar currently claims over 80% of the car sharing market and half of the car sharing members worldwide.
6) Zipcar has good and experienced leaders like Chase and Norman so this internal strength could help the company