Opel to ditch premium price strategy (Europe)

[Hoss]

Unfortunately in Australia, the majority of the public have been conditioned over the last few years that price is now king. Just from what I see as a business owner - you can talk about the quality of your service/product until you are blue in the face, you can try and justify your higher prices on things like you have better trained and more staff working, the shop is in a more convenient place (which means I as the owner pay more rent) - the majority of customers will not come back to shop in your store if you are not competitive on price. You can blame Colesworths for this.

Opel will have to get the pricing right - because if they don't - the people that have no idea about cars will just go and buy a Cruze/Mazda 3 - and if they want to go cheap "premium" European, they'll just go for a Golf.

Well said.

[kabel]

Unfortunately in Australia, the majority of the public have been conditioned over the last few years that price is now king. Just from what I see as a business owner - you can talk about the quality of your service/product until you are blue in the face, you can try and justify your higher prices on things like you have better trained and more staff working, the shop is in a more convenient place (which means I as the owner pay more rent) - the majority of customers will not come back to shop in your store if you are not competitive on price. You can blame Colesworths for this.

Opel will have to get the pricing right - because if they don't - the people that have no idea about cars will just go and buy a Cruze/Mazda 3 - and if they want to go cheap "premium" European, they'll just go for a Golf.

Agreed.
At time of purchase the majority will not be convinced nor will see the difference in quality.
They have buyers eyes on........what can you give me for nothing !

I still think it all comes down to how much market share they want here and how much profit they want from each sale.

[Calibrated]

Unfortunately in Australia, the majority of the public have been conditioned over the last few years that price is now king. Just from what I see as a business owner - you can talk about the quality of your service/product until you are blue in the face, you can try and justify your higher prices on things like you have better trained and more staff working, the shop is in a more convenient place (which means I as the owner pay more rent) - the majority of customers will not come back to shop in your store if you are not competitive on price. You can blame Colesworths for this.

Opel will have to get the pricing right - because if they don't - the people that have no idea about cars will just go and buy a Cruze/Mazda 3 - and if they want to go cheap "premium" European, they'll just go for a Golf.

x infinity

I get far superior products out of germany (Seikel, Zenec, etc). I can explain all the reasons why they are better than their competitors, and joe public will still buy chinese shit.

and then complain on forums that their chinese shit was.... well, you know.

[gmonkey]

Agreed.
At time of purchase the majority will not be convinced nor will see the difference in quality.
They have buyers eyes on........what can you give me for nothing !

I still think it all comes down to how much market share they want here and how much profit they want from each sale.

hahah it wasn't till recently where i was looking at the new car market for my sister and driving a new toyota corolla and hyundai i30, that i realised how much tech the opel's have as standard on baseline models compared to others! for example most don't have setable inter wipers or cruisecontrol or even something so simple as height adjustable seating. Its the small things like them you don't really notice till you don't have them anymore, so if someone is coming from a lancer or echo/yaris they won't see the value of them. I personally struggle with cruise control and set able wipers most useful extra.