Land Rover has historically positioned itself as a functional brand in the UK with the Land Rover brand and as an emotional, lifestyle brand with the Range Rover. When entering the US market, Land Rover had to develop perceptions of category membership and provide comparable features to competitors. It positioned itself as a luxury brand with British heritage. Research found the Discovery appealed more to educated buyers but price dissonance may be limiting sales volume growth. Key recommendations include reinforcing premium positioning through new messaging, emphasizing family use, highlighting transaction utility, increasing marketing spending, boosting advertising and public relations, and experiential marketing.

1. Land Rover – Case Study Presentation Consumer Behavior - Group Number – 2 Alok Shukla, Dharmesh Gandhi, Saurabh Jain, Narendran Subbaiah, Adarsh Natarajan, Ramanathan G A

2. Land Rover Positioning – Historical Positioning - UK Land Rover – Functional Value Product Range Rover – Emotional Value Product Lifestyle Brand (Hedonic Concept) JND concept applied for incrementally increasing the price of Range Rover PR activities targeted towards effective use of reference groups and opinion leaders

3. Initial Positioning in US Range Rover Perception Aspects Had to develop category membership and provide point of parity Point of Parity Four Wheel Drive Ruggedness, Safety Pricing Price dissonance was reduced by educating the customer of its culture and heritage Point of Difference 4WD with Performance Luxur y of a Car Positioned as Luxury Brand with British Heritage Perception Organization Self Selection using the pricing info in Ads Figure & Ground (Advertisements – Vehicles with mudd y ground ) Use of concept of closure through its ads Perception Selection - Problematic going by the low Ad Recall and Brand Awareness numbers (Exhibit – 10) Perception of exclusivity created due to few distributors.

4. LRNA Stable – Applied Concepts Market Segmentation With the 4 X 4 leisure segment, made target users based appeal LR Discovery with Dual Positioning For Young, affluent adults, provided Visible Statements, 3 Doors car For conservative, smart buyers – Functional values, 7 doors car Umbrella Positioning Moved over from a single offering to multiple products under a single brand Discovery Range Rover Defender 90

5. Land Rover Discovery – Some Perceptual Findings Discovery is in the same segment as Ford Explorer and Grand Cherokee, however it appeals more to highly educated buyers. Discovery is also the brand brought predominantly by the affluent class.

6. Land Rover Discovery - Pricing Dissonance? Is the price of the car in the segment too high ? More important as the target is to sell 40000 cars in an year Is price dissonance a bottleneck for LR Discovery sales volume growth ? Customer don’t find positive acquisition utility.

7. Land Rover– Key Recommendations Product Positioning To reduce price dissonance, new messages should be constructed to enforce premium positioning Need to enforce famil y based advertisements more strongly by using the concept of chunking/grouping. Transaction Utility concept The “Transaction Utility’ could be played up to ensure that customers felt good about their decision to purchase the LR. This could be used by following retailing strategy. Allocating funds for Marketing Mix elements Increase budgetary allocation to fund image building activities for the parent brand To increase Ad Recall and Brand recollection and also to educate the customer on brand-premiumness, PR activities needs to be increased. The relevant concepts are increase in sensory inputs using Weber's law. Print Advertisement should focus on reinforcing aesthetics and comfort features where there is a perceptual deficit for LR Discovery vis a vis Ford Explorer/ Grand Cherokee Experiential marketing program should be aggressively pursued Invest in Love of Product Seminars to increase ownership Invest more in Driving Academ y – Can be used to drive perceptions for performance facets Retailing Strateg y Continue with centers -make shopping of vehicles a high involvement activit y . These centers would help in increasing the association with in brands and people and help in shifting the reference prices.