Denver Business Daily

You are in charge of all marketing activities in North America for the Italian luxury sports car manufacturer?

Maserati. Maserati has just introduced a new model that will be competing directly against some other well-known luxury sports cars such as Porsche, Ferrari, Jaguar, and the BMW Z8. How would you positioning strategy for the new Maserati model? What would you do to support and establish this positioning strategy? Keep in mind that although Maserati is as good as its competitors in terms of the car performance and design, it is a small company and it does not have the same amount of money for heavy promotions as its competitors.

Public Comments

1. Do your own homework
2. http://www.maserati.com/ Take a look at how it is done in the real world. Don't let Maserati find out that you make them look like a small company with no money... They are "so rich" they don't even bother listing the base price of their models. It took 3 searches just to find the approx. base price of $135,000. How many Beamers do you think you can get for that? I am still giggling over this "text book" faux pas. Seriously.... you have a wealth of information at your fingertip. All you need to do is "search", read, compare and make notes.
3. It sounds like you are working on a business school case. I would position Maserati as different, more elite than the competition. I would make it a scarce resource, with initially a long waiting list to get one. At the same time pricing is going to be comparable (within 10%) of the direct competitors. You may want to create a specific image (possibly European) and focus on specific demographics, and create a promotional strategy that uses multiple media to introduce the concept. You may want to place the product in some select movies and maybe do what BMW did a few years ago, hiring well known directors to create a short starring the car. In this case you may want to use European directors or people (like Scorzese) who are viewed as Europeans. A less expensive strategy might be to give a car to selected celebrities and makes sure there is PR coverage on them. Also YouTube may be an interesting promotional challenge. I hope this is helpful and gives you some ideas.