Positioning Strategies of Volkswagen and Audi

Volkswagen Group is an enormous company that owns Audi, Scania, Porsche, Skoda, Bentley, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Volkswagen commercial, MAN and Ducati and sells passenger cars. Audi AG is a German automobile manufacturer. The branch of Volkswagen Group Company works on producing, manufacturing, designing, and marketing luxury cars worldwide. More than 11 million vehicles are sold each year by Volkswagen, where 1.8 million amounted the Audi automobiles. What do you think promoted the companies to become successful and prominent in the automobile market? One of the most critical aspects that need to be elaborated on is positioning strategies. 

Let’s commence with the targeting strategies of Audi.

To do so I recommend to watch the commercial example below.

The advertisement starts with a scene where a little girl was meant to compete with others in fast driving. Her father was standing there confidently and was motivating his daughter to overcome the challenge. The commercial was telling about educating children properly, teaching them real-life issues, and giving them advice that plays a considerable role in their development, self-esteem, and achievement of goals.

Father played a cornerstone role because he was the guiding and leading persona for her to succeed. It seems it is a fundamental aspect of his life because he intensively elaborates on it by giving much attention and caring about it. 

Such features described above reveal the values the target segment of Audi has. Kids as a central focus of life, motivated, courageous, and intellectual characteristics of the hero of the commercial example of Audi guide us to think that the company’s target segment is Actualizers. 

Who are Actualizers, and what do we know about them?

Values and Beliefs

Actualizers are successful people who always know what they want and how to get to that point in every aspect they shape. They like to have complete control over everything that surrounds them. The target segment is ambitious but risk-averse people who are used to struggle in order to live up to expectations and their career goals.

Professional advancement is a must, and they look at their job not merely as a source of income but also as a career opportunity. However, family comes first to a place where there is a dilemma between anything and family. 

Actualizers feel responsible for educating their children properly and helping them to achieve their goals. Being aware of what the family members and especially kids are fed up with is also crucial because they prioritize healthy and balanced food. The target segment is intellectual and modern. They value foreign art, culture, international events. Furthermore, technological advancement and usage are primarily exerted by them. 

Shopping Preferences of the segment

Actualizers are used to wearing only and practically. They purchase clothes for their comfort and style or the latest trends. They are not much interested or concerned about keeping up with fashion. As the target segment is fonder of quality products, they visit almost premium brand stores in order to meet quality-driven outcomes. However, they are one of the early adopters of a newness. Being able to buy everything they need from one shop fascinates them because they have planned shopping in advance. 

Other Interesting Facts 

• Trying to satisfy kids’ requests is essential. Nevertheless, it depends on the usefulness of the desire or asks they reveal. 
• As Actualizers are inspired to be perfectionists, they like to read a lot, mainly about fields they lack knowledge of. They purposefully add the storage of knowledge and information as much as possible to keep up-to-date and suit their varying roles. 
• Actualizers feel more than comfortable in using the Internet and PCs. They utilize it for gaining information about news, in terms of professional and family topics, social and environmental causes, and issues. 

Marketing Strategies

One of Audi’s most excellent marketing strategies is persuading and proving its customers to be “perfect” in many cases. The fame of considering cars as luxury ones is quite vital for the Company. It offers different products to the market that are also developing and manufacturing according to the rapid technology change. Audi makes beautifully designed cars with exceptional power.

The Company intensively invests in technological and innovational advancements and designs remarkably high-quality products. The Company suggests a voluminous product portfolio, which is another way to attract more customers. Creativity is something the Company of Audi gives much worth and attention to. Uniqueness and originality are the core values they elaborate on producing engines. 

Problem Removal

In Audi showrooms, the Company proposes highly qualified automobiles that creates an opportunity for customers to access the brand easily. Audi Finance offers a creative financing option to assist customers easily buy the products. Optional pricing strategies are used to use optional features in the cars. For example, Audi Bang, sound system, and navigation system are optional accessories in a vehicle. These aspects do have an impact on the prices of the cars.

The price variations also depend on the geographical locations and economic conditions of a particular country. We can assume that this strategy is quite helpful in terms of giving customers a chance to purchase their favorite automobile at an optional price.

Social Recognition

The Company has achieved social recognition firstly by virtue of caring much about the sustainability issue. Maintaining a sustainable environment means to care about future viability, the Company claims. One of the significant points is reducing CO2 emission and developing carbon-neutrality. Furthermore, the efficient use of materials avoids air pollution and waste. The reduction of the environmental footprint is already in process.

Message Strategy

We see an image from the Instagram Official Account of Audi. The vehicle is supposedly from a hybrid motor that uses electricity to store energy in batteries for further use. The displayed image shows the sophistication of the Company in terms of advanced technology. It more specifically was prone to send a message about its brand archetype. The usage of newness, innovation, modernity, and intellect in one photo transmits a message of Sage’s brand archetype. 

The archetype’s mission is to discover the truth and use the knowledge and intelligence to analyze the world and come up with solutions and proposals. The process of expertise, learning, functioning, and critical thinking are the cornerstones for accurately describing the Sage Brand Archetype. 

Brand Archetypes. Why do we need them in practice?

Our communication strategy may have multiple messaging approaches. But there is some logic that unifies all these and it is called communication based on the archetypal branding. A company may have many messages, but they do not have something in common. For example “Do everything easily”, “Go ahead and be powerful” or Dig deeper and be experienced”.

These 3 quotes have different goals and bring different subconscious effects. One is about Being a Hero, another is about gaining more experience. These are 2 different directions of messaging and the logics of Brand archetypes bring more uniqueness and clearness here. Just read the book “8 steps to a complete archetypal branding” and you will have more experience in communication based on archetypes.

Now, I suggest to move on and discuss the targeting strategies of Volkswagen.

Firstly, let’s watch the commercial example below.

The commercial starts with a scene of a parking zone where the luxury car was located. The vehicle’s owner approaches his car, who seemed to be an office executive by virtue of his formal outfit and bag. He puts his items in the backspace of the car and leaves the parking zone smoothly. The other parts of the advertisement are displayed to drive the car, which is meant to transmit the main idea of elegance and modernity. 

What do you think about the target segment of Volkswagen? Who are they, and how they came up with the idea of selecting that group of people. The features showed and explained above resemble the target segment of Balancers. 

Who are Balancers, and what do we know about them?

Values and Beliefs

Balancers are open, positive, and ambitious people who always do their best to acquire the most out of everything. They like to pursue a life full of challenges where they welcome new things and appreciate changes. Even though they seek new things in their lives, they are somewhat grounded by their need for control.

Balancers want to have complete control over everything that touches the points of their works. The target segment is above average university graduates, where education and intelligence mix up among them. They believe in the power of the mind and want to continue developing themselves throughout their careers with new knowledge sources. 

The family is more than significant for the Balancers. They are concerned about the welfare and the overall well-being of family members and exert all their efforts to live up to their expectations. Even though they want to get to the top of their career, but not at any cost. They perceive the fact that this requires big sacrifices from their family. They try to find the balance in a way that no one might be undervalued. 

Shopping Attitude 

Balancers really appreciate the uniqueness in everything, and the way brands or companies make offers is not an exception. Curious advertisements and posters can undoubtedly attract them. Balancers never hesitate to purchase something new that allured them from the first sight. By virtue of their time limit, Balancers usually do not spend much time in shopping malls; that’s why an item has minimal time to become their favorite one. However, they need to be sure that the product is a useful and sensible-to-use one, or at least they need to know something about it before purchasing. Premium goods guarantee a high quality that is definitely appreciated by the target segment. 

Other Interesting Facts

1. Long-lasting relationships are for Balancers. From their perspective, it is a must to stay faithful in relationships and deny all obstacles that meet during years of living together. 
2. Balancers give much worth to constructive debates where real arguments are exerted. They sometimes point out their view about a specific aspect but do not engage in discussions because of its unreliability. 
3. A healthy lifestyle and sport are attractive for Balancers; however, they rarely have enough spare time to dedicate to exercises and nutritious meals. 

Marketing Strategy

One of Volkswagen’s foundational marketing strategies is its ability to offer the customers varying prices of different models of automobiles. This means it has varieties of vehicles from numerous standards, series, and values, which measure a particular car’s worth. For example, there is a “Stars” group in the Volkswagen company that includes Volkswagen, Audi, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Porsche, and Ducati. They are considered luxury ones from Gross/Share Matrix, where they never cease investments and development. However, there are more affordable vehicles, also from Volkswagen, Skoda, Scania, MAN, etc. 

Problem Removal

Volkswagen company has developed safety and security aspects of cars at the highest rate. They are made with Electronic Stability Control, Tire Pressure Monitoring System, Automatic Post Collision Braking System, Intelligent Crash Response System, High Strength Steel design, etc. These are the most vital vehicles that guarantee accident controls or resulting from low damage to the car, driver, and passengers.  

Social Acceptance 

Volkswagen company claims that they intensively pursue the rules and opportunities associated with the economic, environmental, and social facets. Sustainable mobility, ecological protection, eco-compatible mobility, and social responsibility are the Company’s significant parts they give enormous attention to. Another way of gaining social acceptance is applied to engagement strategies. They usually do projects that are prone to the resolution of social issues. Furthermore, long term reliable and fair partnership confirmations and maintenance are also a vital part of Volkswagen. 

Message Strategy

This funny image is from the Instagram Official Account of Volkswagen that transmits colors, happiness, and positivity. Young guys are taking a smiley selfie on the side of the red Volkswagen car. This image is a message of paradise that the brand archetype was about to reveal. The apparent features described resemble the Innocent brand archetype. It stands for comfortable living, perfection, optimism, faith, and joyfulness.

So much about the positioning strategies of Audi and Volkswagen. We thoroughly explored the targeting, marketing, and message strategies of the companies. We hope this was an interesting article where you found the answers to the questions you were seeking. For more similar posts, check out the main page of our website.