my general feeling about the W205 vs the W204 is that i'm very disappointed. the W205 is not C class worthy.
horrible screen, horrible engine list to pick out, on average about 10 000 euro more expensive then the W204, downgrade in exterior looks,...

 

WOW!!!!! i LOVE that lighter color of wood. I've never seen that shade of wood before in a c class. I also like how the wood is more symmetrical (left, center, right), vs the current wood scheme which is a little unbalanced (passenger has wood above glove box across dash, but it stops at the center console)

 

My opinion is that the w205 will sell very well. The exterior is much more inline with "Mercedes" expectations. It seems to offer quite a bit in terms of options which is great. I love my face lift 350 and prefer the more aggressive exterior, but I appreciate what the next generation brings to the table.

 

+1^ ~ Sportstick wondered what the A Class & CLA driver would upgrade to. Benz seems to be thinking about that. Apparently B Class will cast off it's people carrier image to fill this perceived gap & CLK will return. W205 Wagon & Coupe renderings are on the W205 forum.

 

Yes, and I still do, although I don't know if B Class is coming and it isn't a sedan in any event, if I understand correctly. A hatchback car in an MB showroom here will be a low-volume afterthought.

Here's my point. For those who like and buy CLA, it seems to be generally regarded as a swoopy/sexy four-door, at an entry size and price point. When they need to move up due to life cycle requirements, giving up two doors will not be the typical answer, just as the need for more usable space creeps into their buying equation. A car the size and price of a C Class would make sense, except, here is the potential disconnect. They enter the brand with "swoopy/sexy" and are expected to move up to what another poster earlier called a "staid gentlemen's car"? While MB is making a smooth transition from C to E to S, the shift from a CLA to the new C is a noticeable change in imagery positioning.

On the other hand, if the C Class was more consistent with the CLA to CLS step as an intermediate position, that would be a more likely move-up path. Or, if the CLA was also a "staid gentlemen's car" at that smaller size and price point for those whose tastes run in that direction, it would also make for a more logical showroom progression. As it now stands, MB is enticing new buyers into the showroom with "hot fudge" and then expecting them to move up to "vanilla". I expect CLA will have one of the highest defection rates in the showroom.

 

The A Class was not a sedan in the conventional sense ~ it was a mini people carrier. Benz completely redesigned it to the new A range. A Hatch & CLA.

The present B Class is like an old A Class on steroids. Future intention B Hatch & "CLB" 4 door sedan or whatever they choose to call it. This will bridge the gap from CLA to C Class when people finally grow up/mature.

New small MPV to join Viano MPV & Vito MPV.

New CLK.

I of course can't predict what MBUSA will cherry pick out of the intented new range.

 

I don't think there is another 3-box profile (cabin, with discernible trunk) headed our way between CLA and C Class. A luxury hatch B Class here will be a low-volume vehicle....cars with hatches are either seen here as cheap or very young and not "luxury", witness the prior failures by both MB and BMW to crack that segment. The perceptions have not changed here....folks want the overall balance of the 3-box silhouette in a car, otherwise they get an SUV.

Laughed at the comment at "grow up/mature"! Tastes, attitudes, and values don't shift much over a lifetime. Lots of data to support that. Life cycle stages create different requirements for space/size, but the basic preferences for image/design are fairly consistent. Some folks are born "old" and like traditional/conservative design early on and into their dotage. MB now has their sights set on them with C-E-S.

Others who aspire to more expressive/sporty products also carry that into their senior years and find vehicles sized as needed, but with the imagery they desire. This concept confounded the US industry for years, when GM thought that eventually young Baby Boomers of the 60s/70s would "grow up" and want a traditional Cadillac....they didn't understand the psychology of the buyers. This is also the basis of the CLA---> C Class disconnect. Most attempts to get folks to make kind of switch don't work very well. How many CLS owners come back for a S Class? Not many...it's a schism which doesn't get bridged often.

 

Sorry. Research in ROW shows that people do grow up & taste changes. Your findings might be typical US.

In ROW cars are like good wines. Tastes mature over time & with experience & size of the bank balance.

US experience might be driven by the good things in life being experienced at a younger age.

 

Actually, our data was international, including western Europe and Russia. Using psychographic (not demographic) segmentation, we find wide age distributions in all groups of widely varying attitudes and values. There are young folks with very traditional and "soft/refined" preferences and older folks who were and remain performance lovers, among the dozen or so segments in total. We also found source of sales (what vehicles they owned previously) correlates highly with future intention within psychographic segment preferences, again supporting the consistency over time. And, interestingly, we also found similar kinds of attitude/value sets in different cultures, not 100% overlap due to some inherent cultural differences, but some human likes/dislikes which transcend such borders. People age, but they carry their attitudes and values through life stages, once formed.

I would be interested in knowing your source to the contrary to learn more about its basis.

 

My source is major OEM's that I have worked with over the years. We even used to swap out staff on occasions for research.

One could postulate that, that flawed research might be why the US big three automakers have made so many inappropriate for market vehicles allowing the Japanese etc. to knock the stuffing out of them over many years.

 

I think I understand better. The historical approach that confounded the US industry for so many years seems to have been a shared point of view with those you may have known over the years. It used to be "conventional wisdom" that people "grew up" and changed their tastes. The more enlightened realization that psychographics more accurately predict behavior than demographics was a relatively recent finding in the industry's history. With this, targeting has evolved from age cohorts to attitudinal sets. This is why larger and more expensive vehicles in expressive brands are logical extensions of the smaller and less expensive vehicles, to satisfy a consistent set of automotive values as the buyers need/want larger packages. In the old school, the thought was that older buyers wanted more soft and traditional products...the relatively recent understanding is that the folks who wanted that later in life aspired to them from their early years. And, this finding does transcend borders. But, it may be coming later to some marketers than to others.

 

Without doubt so called conventional wisdom has been severely flawed & large Corporations suffer it in spades.

The segmentation etc. that I am accustomed to follows geographic, demographic & a psychographic approach.

As a researcher I'm quite sure you understand that one needs to segment, segment & segment again in all disciplines to get to the truth & identify/predict market drivers.

An Australian colleague, Ray Buschmann (who now runs his own innovation company) and I, in the process orientated world of the supermajor oil company, developed the segmentation process (STRATMAPP) & maintained it's currency until recently that is used by the company that I still consult to. It is highly regarded by the likes of Kline, Enerfinance, IBM Consulting, McKinsey, Landor Associates, Wirthlin/HI Europe etc. etc. & OEM's that it was confidentially shared with & used by.

Findings have been that there is nothing unusual about a little Glyn Ruck that started his automotive life driving 7 noisy, snorty, rorty but dynamic Alfa Romeo's with stage 3 cams & ever larger Weber DCOE range sidedraft carburettors & migrated with maturity to something more refined like the products of Daimler Benz.

In my early life I was happy to drive 1400 Km's to view a F1 race at Kyalami in one of my Alfa's. Today I want to do the same trip in something more relaxing & refined like a Benz. While I still thoroughly enjoy a short blast in a Boxster S or whatever I would not wish to drive that sort of car every day even if somebody draped a 4 door saloon body over that fine chassis. The noise, vibration, endless steering kickback & general lack of comfort would drive me nuts. All positives if you want to toss a car around a race circuit.

 

+1 I lusted over a Porsche 911for years (thought that they fit me like the proverbial glove). I remember the day that I drove one where my finances and cost of the car were in alignment. (some years after driving a Mustang and a couple of 914's and MR2). When I got back into my 190E and thought why would I spend more for that loud, rough riding relatively unrefined piece when I can have this for half the cost.

 

Seems Glyn and I have done similar kinds of work over the years. We've both likely given the speech that, in reality, there are as many segments as there are people. Everyone has a unique set of attitudes, values, and behaviors. Segmenting is for the purpose of creating groups with meaningful similarities so that marketers can target them in a purposeful manner to create products and address messages. Within any segment, there are also distributions of members who will be central, or closer on a dendogram to adjacent segments. So, with large sample data, in any segment, there are certainly trends, and there are outliers.

In Glyn's case, he continues to enjoy the passions he had earlier, but is expressing appreciation for additional attributes. He once liked and still likes characteristic "A", but now also expresses like for "B". So, he has positive attitudes for both "A" and "B" in different situations. This is different than the origins of this discussion where the concept of "growing up/maturing" leading to a change suggested "A" displaces "B", which is not even the case he suggests. Over large data, that does not happen. He now just likes them in different proportions, and one would suggest he was never really the most typical representative of "A", but likely always harbored a latent or overt appreciation for both sets of attributes. The large sample data does show, on different continents, that actual members of a psychographic segment tend to stay in that segment as they move through different life stage needs. Here's a favorite example. When those who centrally value performance moved into a life stage where they needed a minivan, they overwhelmingly (in the US) selected one minivan far and away over others.....the Honda Odyssey, not Sienna, not Sedona, not the domestics. And the evidence is clear that all who analyzed the behavior of the vehicles in the minivan segment found the Odyssey had the more performance-oriented chassis, steering, and powertrain characteristics. The values/attitudes remain, but the expression varies as the needs change.

But, this thread has gone on a tangent from the original point (guilty!). The start of this was that, while MB is toiling to align the expressive values of the C--->E--->S, it is quite a jump to enter that track from the CLA which has notably different attributes and expresses different values. Just as BMW is working a Gran Coupe strategy as compared to its traditional sedans, MB might be wise to consider an intermediate step between CLA and CLS for those who are drawn to such expressive positionings. As evidence of the size of this kind of gap, I took a look at a US database and see that less than 3% of S Class buyers came from prior drivers of CLS. More actually came to S Class from 7 Series! That same disconnect was the issue I was raising for the CLA to C Class analogy.

 

As I said Benz is considering a complete redesign of the B Class as they did with the A in an endeavour to bridge that gap. The present B Class people carrier MPV is a complete misfit in the range. Many will be happy to go from CLA to MT Avantgarde W205. Lack of an MT offering in the US is an aberration.

Back on the segmentation front. One thing I insisted on when it came to evaluation of the distilled results of in our case 227 markets total of which 76 were considered critical was that final evaluation was done by a carefully selected, multidisciplined team. Every member had to have considerable & varying international experience preferably exceeding 10 years abroad from home base. Individuals are far too inclined to flavour the ouput with personal experiences or biases leading to costly distortion. This obviously for global strategy development. In country stategy (product range, channels to market etc.etc.) is managed on a think globally & enterprise value while acting locally basis.

The entire process was obviously bottom up but the ouput managed functionally globally.

Nevertheless the devil is always in the detail.

 

If we get the B, it won't mean much as a hatchback car.

Regarding segmentation, did your approach utilize K-means or hierarchical autonomous regression? I'm not a statistician, but I've had experts advocate both sides of that choice.

 

I honestly think you're overthinking this. People who buy a CLA and later want a more expensive MB *will* buy the C-E-S b/c (esp in the US) all they care about is the big shiny ornament on the hood or in the grill. If they truly wanted something that was sexy, sporty, and mid-sized, Maserati would be selling like hotcakes.

I don't think most people who get a luxury car (maybe even most people who buy a car in the US) can name all of the cars in manufacter's line. They'll simply say, "Oh, the CLA cost me $35,000 when I got it. Now I can afford to spend $50,000." They'll see the "Sport" in the name of the C-class, the salesperson will tell them that the "Sport" model is for "younger people" (just as a salesperson tried w/ my father when he was looking at the C300), and a sale will be made.

And as people mature and grow, they frequently end up having families. Sexy and fun take a backseat to more practical concerns. Families don't fit so well in a CLS. They'll get a C or an E and then, if they want something fun, they probably have the discretionary income (esp if they're driving an E) to get something on the side that they can drive on the weekends or whatever. They definitely have the discretionary income to get addt'l cars if they're driving an S-class....

Just my $0.02.

 

No. We have our own clustering methodology & sometimes applied linear regression to some data sets at +90% confidence levels.

 

Jeez I feel like I am back in Six Sigma Black Belt training

 

I'm very excited about the w205! I'm going to move back from the 212 and try it out asap

 

 

So true...it reminds me of a professor constantly saying "statistics, damn statistics and lies"...was his favorite quote as it pointed to the fact that selective data collection and usage you can pretty much make any point you want if you play with it enough.

It think that Glyn and Sportstick are both correct. We all have our innate preferences that generally guide how our tastes "mature".

 

+1^ Statistical crap & bias can sustain an argument over decades. It is an imprecise science.

Everything is opinion & not fact. Different conclusions can be deduced from the same data set. Neither is necessarily correct & is certainly not fact. Some is more useful than other when embarking on strategy development. Sometimes committing to a strategy is more important than the accuracy of the research data on which the strategy is based. The research is a guide to running in the right direction first time out of the gate. Two apparently opposing strategies can work equally well.

Any suggestion that I am right & you are wrong is pure folly.

Corporate arrogance that they exclusively understand the global markets leads to endless sub par performance away from home base. We have a superior crystal ball syndrome.

Substantial away from home base country experience improves the breed.

e.g. You cannot be a China market specialist without having spent considerable time there.

 

You are absolutely right!

 

As is the converse.