Small is Beautiful - The Mini case study

Thèmes abordés

Mini, Mini Cooper, car market, BMW Mini, market of small cars

Résumé du document

Mini Cooper from its inception has quickly made its way on the automotive market. The first release was in 1961 and the Mini Cooper S in 1963 has propelled the brand to the top. What distinguishes this brand from others is this strong and loyal community that was created around this car. In 1969, the new movie "The Italian job" has enabled the brand to increase its notoriety and thus create a real mutually supportive community and to share experiences or simply to meet. The company wanted to put in place at the start "actions and events marketing" to create a strong relationship (client and business) and to ensure that customers could remain faithful despite competition. Mini realized that all the owners of the brand promulgated in stratospheric way and enabled during shutdown of its production to continually bring to life the brand through word of mouth and various community meeting (physical or by forum after creation of internet).

Extraits

[...] From then on, Mini grew up to MINI. The change made was not only its brand spelling, but also larger size, higher standard and glocalization gene. Sarcastically, the beat to BMW came so quickly, in 2001, only 24,980 MINI sold. Dramatically, the reverse just cost another year, since MINI's sale achieved 144,119 in 2002. No matter how much different between Mini and MINI, how many people criticized new MINI, the ultimate evaluation is the performance of sale volume. Over 4 million Mini sold during 1959-2000 in history. [...]

[...] It was essentially young customers who bought these cars. The context was different, and cars were having specific features during the 60's for the high majority, Mini was a new way for drivers to express their freedom and for being unique. This brand community building was created directly by the customers linked to their motivation for promoting Mini's cars. In the first beginnings, mini owners were meeting each other in different countries to promote to share their experiences, meet other mini owners and have good time. [...]

[...] The first release was in 1961 and the Mini Cooper S in 1963 has propelled the brand to the top. What distinguishes this brand from others is this strong and loyal community that was created around this car. In 1969, the new movie Italian has enabled the brand to increase its notoriety and thus create a real mutually supportive community and to share experiences or simply to meet. The company wanted to put in place at the start “actions and events marketing” to create a strong relationship (client and business) and to ensure that customers could remain faithful despite competition. [...]

[...] Their goal is to spread out a positive image of the brand in order to perpetuate the history and beginnings (very British). This principle applies only for mini models and not for the new BMW Mini models. Third, the Mini brand did not incite the fact of being only a community but possessed their tradition and ritual surrounding the brand that helped to fight for more than 50 years to contribute to the image of the brand. And even though BMW has done his best to follow the same enthusiasm that known the old model of mini, Babyboomers fans found themselves confused by the change of design and driving conditions. [...]

[...] Naturally, baby boomers get older, and new consumers are growing up. Besides, after merge, the intention by BMW was to resurrect popular characters to evoke fond memories in last 60's, combing with modern element together. In order to get there, BMW marketers played on nostalgia strategy, since they want old consumers to attach their pleasant memories to new products and invite new customers to join. New MINI, therefore, introducing as retro brand, was an updated version from prior Mini historical period. [...]