The Volvo car market
Volvo Corporation strongly believes in creating sustainable value for its customers and shareholders. The Volvo philosophy is that the popularity index of the car is in direct proportion to its availability and maintainability and hence Volvo Corporations tries to make its cars easily available and easily maintainable. Accordingly Volvo not only expands its markets, it ensures that it sets up its plants and maintenance units in the different countries so that the cars can be manufactured near or at the point of sale and can be maintained anywhere, at anytime. The cars are designed to match the local conditions, customized to the tastes of its varied customers and to become the most precious life long asset.
Volvo urges its customers to regard the relationship between the customer and the company as a life long partnership. The company continues its support after the car is sold in a proactive and effective manner. It provides its customers with maintenance kits that contain original parts and all the tools required for the maintenance activity. Its outlets are linked over a network and customers can get their cars serviced, checked and tested at any outlet. Customer service also includes On-call and telecommunications facilities that trigger of automatic alarms and summons help in case of accidents. It is, therefore, not surprising that Volvo is one of the most popular cars in the US and several other countries today. Volvo cars are sold in more than 100 countries and the market is expanding gradually but surely.
The Volvo Corporation builds a range of car models. The Sedan with four doors, intended for safe and secure driving comes in the series S40, S60 and S80. The Versatile wagon comes in series V50, V70 and all new V70. The adventure car is XC70 and XC90. The Coupe convertible is C30 and C70.
The XC60 Concept was been launched during 2003. The car is a success both in new and used car markets even after three years. The sale price of a used car is still around 60-65% of the original price. It is clear that the car has a strong demand and high residual value. The popularity of this car is attributed to the fact that it has car-like driving qualities with a seven front facing seat layout.
The new C70, S80 and C30 have also been popular in the world market. The C30 also received the prestigious award -Das Goldene Lenkrad(Golden Steering Wheel).
Today, Volvo has a very small share in the global market-a mere 1-2%, with the
exception of Sweden, where it has a very large market-every fifth car sold is a Volvo. The countries where Volvo has a reasonably large market other than USA and Sweden are: Britain (8.6%), Germany (7.9%), Italy (4.6%), Netherlands, Spain, Japan, Belgium and Canada.
Volvo’s market share in the US is around 28%. Around 443,947 cars were sold in 2005. However, there was a slight dip in the sales during 2005 when the market share dipped by 3% as compared to the previous year. During 2006, Volvo entered into an unprecedented phase of new model launches and new launches have been planned for every year up to 2009. The first quarter figures of 2007 are showing increasing sales. Volvo XC90 was considered to be the most popular model as more than 85,994 cars were sold. Volvo V50 and S40 were close with sales of 83,202 and 75136 car sales respectively.
Volvo is looking towards China for expanding its export market and is planning to launch itself into Russia. The markets in China grew by 83% during the first quarter of this year while the markets in Ireland, Portugal, South Africa and Greece grew between 25-39%.