David
Geiger
Managerial
Marketing
Individual
HW #1
Google
Trends and Analytics for Digital Marketing
For this assignment, I used Google
Trends to compare five luxury car brands.
It will focus on the popularity of the car brands used as Google search
terms rather than revenue or profit.
While our group, Team 7, has not officially picked a topic or industry,
we have discussed the possibility of working with a car dealership. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting
to explore the popularity of the three major European luxury car brands – Audi,
BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and two of the major Asian luxury car brands – Lexus and
Infiniti.
The
beginning search I conducted consisted of using the five automobile brand names
as previously stated as the search terms, the location selected was worldwide
and the time frame was for the past 30 days.
As shown in the graph below, BMW
was clearly the most popular over the past month with an average score of 94. Mercedes-Benz and Audi fought closely for second
and third with scores of 70 and 62 respectively. Lexus and Infiniti were a far distant 4th
and 5th place with scores of 16 and 6 respectively.
For
a more comprehensive analysis of the popularity of the search terms over time,
I looked at three different timeframes. The
first is the popularity of the terms over the past twelve months. The second is the popularity of the terms
over the past five years. The third is
the popularity of the terms since Google started to track the data.
For the past twelve months, the
popularity of the search terms for the five car companies are as follows: BMW
(93 avg.), Mercedes-Benz (68 avg.), Audi (62 avg.), Lexus (15 avg.), Infiniti
(9 avg.). Of the five car brands, only
the European companies had unusual spikes in popularity. BMW had a popularity of 100 from October 9th
– 15th, due to a product recall on their R nineT bikes.[1] Mercedes-Benz rose to 74 popularity from
October 23rd – 29th due to a rally being held by the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) at the
Mercedes-Benz Stadium, home of the Atlanta Falcons.[2] Finally, Audi had a their popularity spike to
71 between July 30th and August 5th due to the company
posting July sales increases as their new A5 Sportback and Q7 lead consumer
demand.[3]
The next graph shows the popularity
of the search terms over a five-year period.
The popularity of the brands was listed in the following order: BMW (90
avg.), Mercedes-Benz (63 avg.), Audi (59 avg.), Lexus (14 avg.) and Infiniti (9
avg.). Very similarly, the five-year
average resembles the average over the past twelve months. The three luxury European automobile companies
were significantly more popular than their Asian automobile company counterparts
again. Of the three European companies,
BMW still had a sizeable lead over Mercedes-Benz and Audi. For the Asian companies, Lexus was more
popular than Infiniti once again.
The final graph below demonstrates
the popularity of the search terms since Google stated tracking this data. In January 2004, the beginning of the data
collection, the popularity of the brands was as follows: BMW (93 avg.), Mercedes-Benz (65 avg.), Audi
(46 avg.), Lexus (13 avg.), Infiniti (6 avg.).
While BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus,
and Infiniti have all stayed relatively the same since 2004, Audi has climbed
the highest in the rankings from an average score of 46 in January 2004 to 62
in September 2017. BMW may still have a commanding lead in
popularity, Audi’s popularity has grown to challenge Mercedes-Benz for second
place instead of being a distant third in popularity.
In my
opinion, enhancing brand reputation is very difficult as evidenced by the fact
that four out of the five car brands have remained relatively the same. However, the European brands have an
advantage over the Asian luxury brands simply because of the length of time the
European brands have been in business compared to their Asian
counterparts. BMW was established 101
years ago,[1]
Mercedes-Benz 91 years ago,[2]
and Audi 107 years ago.[3] Lexus and Infiniti were both established 28
years ago in 1989.[4][5] The three European car brands have had many
more decades to establish themselves as the staple luxury car brands.
While
it appears that Audi should have the largest advantage of all the car brands
due to being around the longest, the company has undergone a series of
transformations due to merging with other car brands and marketing conventional
cars to non-luxury audiences for decades.[6] They were branded as Auto Union AG by 1932 and
did not re-brand themselves as Audi AG until 1985.[7]
While
Audi lost ground to their European counterparts, they have impressively come
roaring back in the past two decades to close the gap in the luxury brand
market. They re-established and
differentiated themselves as a premium luxury brand using eight and twelve
cylinder engines.[8] Audi also leveraged their technological
advancements including the development of direct-injection diesels, the use of
aluminum bodies and the introduction of hybrid vehicles.[9] It appears that there is no magical answer to
why they are surging in the luxury car market other than building their brand
over time through enhanced technologies, top performance and clever marketing.
[1] https://ultimatemotorcycling.com/2017/08/29/bmw-recalls-2014-2017-r-nine-t-models-swingarm-defect/
[2] http://www.eurweb.com/2017/08/naacp-calls-for-nfl-boycott-if-colin-kaepernick-remains-unsigned/#
[3] https://media.audiusa.com/en-us/releases/176
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz
[6] https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/history-audi-picture-special
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexus
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infiniti
[9] https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/history-audi-picture-special
[10] Id.
[11] Id.
[12] Id.
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