The premium segment was the first to grow, where money is not much of a concern and customers simply have come time to update their car fleet instead of just installing new LCD TVs in the headrests of the front seats. In this segment, loyalty programs, which were abundantly conducted by almost all premium brands, also played a positive role.
For example, BMW, which surged to first place in this segment in February, offered the X5 with various additional options at a special price of 30,000 euros. This attractive offer was gratefully received by the public, and the Bavarian concern ended up among the leaders for February.
A similar picture, by the way, is observed in digital equipment sales – professional digital cameras of the premium class are doing quite well, despite the general downturn. The same thing is happening in the mobile terminal trade – expensive Nokia devices have hardly reduced volumes.
In the mass segment, the first positions are traditionally held by AvtoVAZ, but due to a shortage of cars, its share was about 13%. This happened because new Russian-assembled models were practically not imported over the past three months, and trade was mainly in Ukrainian-made models. But the situation is gradually improving and VAZ is accelerating its growth.
For Kia, the new lending program and model lineup update were successful, resulting in second place in February. ZAZ and Chery are in a similar position, showing relative stability with slight stagnation – approximately minus 2%. Mitsubishi, Chevrolet, and Renault are gradually, albeit slowly, increasing volumes.
Toyota launched an interesting program for buyers of its Camry model, once super-popular among provincial Ukrainian police officials. Every buyer of this model in Kiev from March 1 to April 30, 2010, will receive a gift of 1000 (one thousand) liters of high-quality gasoline. That is, it can be said that the discount will be about 8,000 hryvnias (or 1,000 dollars, or 2.5-4 percent, depending on the configuration) at current prices.
Toyota's marketers and advertisers did their best – 'a ton of gasoline as a gift' sounds much better than '3% discount'. It will be interesting to see the results of the promotion, because, as a rule, buyers of this model are not poor people, and it is hard to say whether such a nice bonus will affect their decision.
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