Part
01
of one
Part
01
How is Renault's marketing performing?
Hello! Thanks for your question about Renault's marketing performance. The short answer is that while Renault has continued to experience strong sales throughout Europe, customer satisfaction and loyalty have remained relatively low.
Below you will find a deep dive of my findings.
METHODOLOGY
To answer this question I compiled articles discussing Renault's marketing performance as well as information gleaned from their corporate materials. I focused specifically on European performance, as requested.
FINDINGS
Starting off, Renault has a recent history of being awarded for its marketing efforts. In 2015, two Renault advertising campaigns won international recognition, including an Epica Award in the animation category and the International Automobile Festival's award for the best advertising film.
***Brand recognition***
That said, Renault's brand recognition is not particularly strong. While no Europe-exclusive rankings were available, global top-100 rankings from the European Branding Institute and social media analytics company Netbase did not include Renault, although both had other comparable automakers, European and non-European, such as VW, Daimler, Nissan or Honda.
***Sales Performance***
Despite the poorer brand recognition than some other automakers, Renault has continued to see strong European sales. In 2015, Renault's European market sales in the passenger and light commercial vehicle (LCVs) segments increased by 12.3%, while the all-brand volume increase in these segments was 9.4%, giving the French company an 7.8% share of the market, compared to 7.6% in 2014 and 7.4% in 2013. In terms of LCVs, Renault has maintained the top position for 18 years and 2015 was not exception, while it has also recently become the European leader in the electric vehicle market, with sales up 49% in 2015. This trend of outperforming the market continued into 2016, with Renault's H1 2016 sales increasing by 14% compared to total market growth of 9.6%.
In terms of areas where Renault's sales appear to be under threat, Renault saw losses of market share in Spain (-0.7%) and Belgium/Luxembourg (-0.1%) in the first half of 2016.
***Sales Strategy***
Renault attributes much of it's recent success to the launch of new models in 2015, which it hopes will move it to the second-best-selling brand in Europe in 2017. In tandem with these new product launches, Renault has also focused on improving it's "Renault Stores" in Europe, in order to better meet the modern customer's expectations and provide better quality of service. Throughout 2015 this new store model was extended to all European regions, with the number of Renault Store dealerships doubling from 600 to 1,200.
***Customer Satisfaction & Loyalty***
Despite the strong sales numbers, Renault has continued to struggle with customer satisfaction and loyalty, although there have been past efforts in this area that have shown some signs of success. In J.D. Power's 2014 Vehicle Ownership Satisfaction surveys for Germany and the UK, Renault ranked 20th out of 24 automakers and 18th out of 24, respectively. In light of this, the company brought new corporate attention to this area, and by 2016, Renault was ranked 5th out of 16 companies in the volume brands category for Germany, but still at a modest 12 out 18 companies in the UK survey. Furthermore, a recent UK study found that Renault owners were least loyal to the brand when looking to purchase a new vehicle. When searching for a new vehicle, 73.55% of Renault owners considered an alternative brand, while just 49.4% of Audi owners explored other automakers.
CONCLUSION
To wrap it up, while Renault maintains a strong position in the European market in terms of auto sales, their marketing efforts have seemed to focus predominantly on issuing new models and building out their dealership infrastructure. While the new dealership model promises to offer some improvements in customer service, recent findings indicate that there is still much to improve in this area.
Thanks for using Wonder! Please let us know if we can help with anything else!