Enterprise Rent-A-Car - Selling the Dream - related questions.

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Enterprise Rent–A–Car

Selling the Dream

Objective of the Assignment

 

The objective of this assignment is to answer the given questions in the case study, reflecting to what was learned through marketing classes and analyze it using the case study

Company background

Enterprise is the largest car rental company in North America, which is a $6 billion company with 600,000 vehicles, more than 50,000 employees and over 4,800 locations in the U.S., Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom and Ireland. Activities include renting of vehicles, fleet acquisition, and vehicle maintenance and vehicle disposition through wholesale vehicle channels. In addition to car rentals, Enterprise also offers other services which include Corporate Class®, which is the discount program for local business vehicle rentals. Car Sales, which offers quality, pre-owned cars with "haggle-free buying, worry-free ownership, fleet Services, which provides complete fleet management services for small and large companies seeking leased vehicle fleets and rideshare supplies vans to groups of co-workers for commuting purposes.

1.) How are the buyer Decision process different from someone renting a replacement car due to a wreck, for someone renting a car for leisure/vacation purposes; for business renting a car?

A customer decides to rent a car( figure 1) when he finds his car wrecked, stolen or in the shop being repaired or if he want to go on a vacation and finds the family car not suitable or if he needs a additional car when his friends or other family members are visiting him or if somebody in the family needs to be picked up. However selecting a particular car company depends on consumer behavior. According to book marketing Third European edition, the decision process and action of people involved in buying and using products are termed their buying behavior

Type of consumer behavior

Routine Response Behavior: A consumer practices routine response behavior when buying frequently purchased low cost items that needs little search and decision effort. Rent a car is not as cheap as buying a product. Hence the consumer might not use this behavior for this kind of service

Limited Decision making: consumers engage in limited decision making when they buy products occasionally and when they need information about an unfamiliar brand in a familiar category. For Rent a car the consumer try to find out the service offered by the rent a car company analyze its service and ask friends about their travel experience.

Extensive decision making: This is the most complex decision making behavior comes in play when purchasing involves unfamiliar, expensive or infrequently used products. The consumer might use this kind of behavior if he has never used the enterprise service or if he has not used a rental car service

Different kinds of decision process

The consumer buying decision process: This is a five stage process that involves problem reorganizations, information search, Evaluation of alternatives, purchase and post purchase evaluation (figure 2)

Problem Recognition: Here the problem is whether the consumer should rent a car or not, .Ie. The Consumer has to decide whether he should use the service. (Example) Whether buying laptop computer for a student is important or not

Information search: This process is getting information on the rental car service. A consumer study shows that word to mouth communication has a stronger impact on consumer judgments on products and services. In the early days one of main source of growth for enterprises came with word or mouth responses.(Example) if the students want to buys a laptop, he will search in magazine , papers and websites for information

Evaluation of alternatives: The consumer checks several alternatives before decide on enterprise. Before taking a decision the consumer analyses the price, service offered, staff behavior, prompt Service they get, Vehicle conditions etc.(Example) the students gets quotes from different companies. He will compare the product based on the configuration, the price he is paying, the warranty he gets and the reputation of the company

Purchase: The purchase stage here is whether to use this service or not. This is outcome of consumer behavior. (Example) this is when he decides to buy the product

Post purchase Evaluation: after the customer has used enterprises service, he will evaluate the service. Some possible influence on a decision purpose includes personal influences, psychological influence and social influence. (Example) after the laptop has been bought; it shall be evaluated using different method.

Service Marketing: Here the product which enterprise delivers is service. kolter defines service as “ Any activity or benefit that one party can offer to another which is extremely intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything” . Service characteristics are intangibly, inseparability and variability.

  • Intangibility means they cannot be seen, tasted , felt or hear

  • Inseparability means produced and consumed at the same time and cannot be separated by providers

  • Variability means quality may vary greatly depending on who provides them and when and where and how

Enterprise get a lot of business through referral and this is because it has a good relation with those people. The employees thank them by visiting them with donoughts or pizzas. However the business they get from referral sources are owner of whose cars have been repaired or wrecked. Enterprise also gets a lot of business from people who go on vacations. They select enterprise because they believe this is the car company nearby their house, and also enterprise has the service of picking up people especially stranded customers to take them to their destinations. Enterprise became so famous in their service that their advertising theme became “Pick Enterprise. We will pick you up.” This Advertising theme proved to be worth full, because enterprise started to get more call and more people started to know the service. The theme also helped the people realize that an enterprise was very serious in its business and want the offer the people the best service.

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Enterprise has always focused on being the best in meeting customers’ needs. That focus has been the key to their success. Enterprise Rent-A-Car started out by leasing cars to individuals. Enterprise started to recognize that their leasing customers needed replacement cars while their leased cars were in the shop. Most of Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s growth has come from this focus on the local market.

2.) What are the bases for segmenting the rental car market?

Segmentation is splitting market place according to criteria. Market segmentations is the process by which customers in markets with some heterogeneity can be grouped ...

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