Car Automotive

Archive for August 6th, 2009

The retail marketplace is polarizing into a “world of extremes” forcing retailers to reorient their core strategies. Megaretailers dominate one end of the competitive spectrum and focused specialists the other. At the same time, increasing customer diversity and individualism is creating significant demand complexity.Undifferentiated companies in the middle are facing tremendous pressure; many have failed and others are still struggling to find the path back to consistent growth
and success. In this environment, the rules for how retailers operate and compete have changed.To a large degree, the traditional means of competitive differentiation can no longer be relied upon. For many retailers, strategies based just on price have been rendered ineffective as megaretailers have mastered the “mass” end of the marketplace
with superior scale and efficiency. And traditional levers of ompetition, such as assortment, service and customer and market segmentation, which were once differentiators, can now be easily copied or competed away, if they are not somehow made proprietary. For example, home installation and repair services – like those
pioneered by Sears – are proliferating across retail as competitors such as Best Buy,Home Depot and Lowe’s offer similar services.
At the same time, customer expectations continue to rise. The Internet’s nearly unlimited wealth of information has created customers that are accustomed to having instant access to price and product comparisons, independent thirdparty reviews, and tailored recommendations based on their buying history.Their comfort with technology also continues to grow,as witnessed by the proliferation of
mobile phones,Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs),video game players and other personal devices.

140 g/km of CO2 on average for new cars by 2008/9
In 1996, the EU’s Member States and the European Parliament approved a ‘Community Strategy to reduce CO2 emissions from passenger cars’. The strategy’s objective is to reduce the average CO2 emissions of newly sold passenger cars in the EU to 120 grams per kilometre by 2005, or 2010 at the latest. The 120 g/km target represents a 35% reduction over 1995 levels. As CO2 is directly
linked to fuel consumption, we can say that the 120 g/km target corresponds to a fuel consumption of 5 litres per 100 km for petrol cars and 4.5 litres per 100 km for diesel cars, to be measured on the official European driving cycle. This objective was to be reached through three ‘pillars’: technical measures, consumer information, and fiscal
measures.In 1998 the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA2) committed to the EU on behalf of its members to reduce the average CO2 emissions from their new car sales in the EU to 140 g/km by 2008. This is a reduction of 25% over 1995 levels,and equivalent to a fuel consumption of 6.0 litres per 100 km for petrol cars and 5.3
litres for diesel cars. The 120 g/km objective was, informally,postponed to 2012.In 1999, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA) and the Korean Automobile Manufacturers Association (KAMA3) made similar commitments for their EU sales. The only difference is that their target year to achieve an average 140 g/km CO2 figure is one year later, 2009. All three associations, in other words, were
given a decade to comply.