Better yet, keep the keg and ditch the marketing research, especially if you're a company like DaimlerChrysler and can just head up the street to Oakland University to get commentary on potential new models from a bunch of college kids from all over the country who've come to work for you for free. Oh wait, that's just what the German-American hybrid car company's done. DaimlerChrysler's participating in Vanderbilt University's Accelerator Summer Program, which puts business and marketing students into companies across the country, DaimlerChryslers Dodge brand included, to help the company market themselves better to the so-called "millenials" — the kids born after 1980 looking at buying cars...
...at some point in the next five years. So what'd Dodge learn? We've no clue — but with changes to its lineup like the Dodge Caliber's replacement of the Neon, it appears someone over in Auburn Hills may have been listening to the college kids.
But it sounds like they've got a ways to go according to CNW Marketing Research which provided the Freep with the following gleanings from its survey:
Millenials looking to buy:
- A Dodge Car — 13.5%
- A Dodge Truck — 11%
- A Lexus Car — 21.5%
- A Mini Cooper — 28%
- A Chevy Truck — 24%
Wow, that's kinda divergent, isn't it? You've got roughly the same number of folks who want to buy a Mini Cooper as want to buy a Chevy Truck? We've gotta see that marketing to that demographic...would it have a Chevy truck carrying a Mini Cooper in the truck bed?
DODGE CONSULTS STUDENT ADVISERS: A quest for young car buyers [Freep]
Related:
Gen Xers Like H3. Why? [internal]