Apparently it's targeted at young urban females. And the wife's first comment upon seeing this - "What? Does Perodua thinks all women are cutesy and stupid? It's either they listen to a lot of stupid women. Or the company is run by men who are hopeless at home and does not understand women." LOL.
Look, teenage girls may want cutesy dangling things. Japanese girls and some Asian girls may like that "Kawai-ey" pose. But when it comes to high priced purchases like cars, women want everything that men want - and then more. Any men that have a decent understanding of women knows this. The only difference in purchases made by women is that they may place higher importance in more rational / pragmatic areas, as compared to men whom sad to say are often quite stupid and let their balls drive their purchases - gaya ma. How else would one explain that Myvi running around with 4 exhaust pipes sticking out? One for each cylinder? Or those that are quite proud with coverting their Myvi into a Toyota Passo look-alike?
If there is anything to be learned over the last 10 years or so of car makers trying to tap the growing female market, it is that women DON'T want an overly feminine car. Take the previous generation Nissan Micra / March for example, the car literally screams of oestrogen and progesterone.
It did sell relatively well in Europe, predominantly to women buyers of course. Until you look at the bigger picture - the best sellers in the European market supermini segment like Ford Fiesta, Vauxhall Corsa, Peugeot 207 and even VW Polo, all of which are even more popular amongst women buyers, it becomes apparent that maybe the market potential of the Micra / March is hampered by its overly feminine looks. Which explains why for the new Micra / March, Nissan reverted to a more gender-neutral design.
It's the same story with the VW New Beetle. While the original Ferdinand Porsche design was a gender neutral vehicle, the New Beetle looked like some automotive translation of Miley Cyrus. Compared that to the MINI. While the MINI did not stay true to its original philosophy of being an affordable and highly space efficient vehicle, it did appeal to both men and women, just like the original designed penned by the late Sir Alec Issigonis. Needless to say, the sales of the new MINI kept climbing until it went off the scale. Sales were so good that BMW didn't see a need to change the design after all these years, after 2 generations of MINI. When you've hit the sweet spot, don't do anything stupid to fix a non-issue. Celebrities, hair stylists, bankers, lawyers, students, footballers, everyone be it male or female wanted one. VW could not hope to achieve that with the girlie looking New Beetle.
VW has learnt its lesson and this is also why the next generation Beetle will be redesigned to also be gender-neutral. The next generation Beetle is rumoured to be launched by 2011 but little is known about it so far, it is a very well kept secret by VW. Although VW have already dropped hints that the car will have a mass market appeal, aspiring to transcend all social classes / demographics.
"We are confident that the 1.3L Myvi LE will appeal to the young and urban female buyers. We also understand that lady drivers place great importance on having the vanity mirror in their car. Therefore we have added a vanity mirror on the driver's side as well," Perodua MD En Aminar Rashid Salleh.
To actually mention on the inclusion of a driver side vanity mirror only highlights the omission of a very low cost item in the other Myvi range, though it is not frequently used feature. What's wrong with a guy expecting my car to have a driver side vanity mirror? "After paying so much don't I deserve a bloody mirror thrown in as standard? It's nobody's business whether do I use it or not." That's what a regular bloke will tell you. There is nothing special about including something that should have been a standard feature in the first place (which now we know is not) and it is certainly not some profound new discovery to find out that women (and sometimes men) use vanity mirrors.
A mainsteam model like a Myvi will not benefit from having a variant targetted solely towards one particular gender. It's really not that different from the other variants and neither does it really meet serious needs of women. It only clutters up the model image perception by the general public. Not mention increasing your market entry cost. Below is a good example of a car targetted at young urban female audience while not driving away the blokes. This was by Mazda Australia, for the Mazda2 hatch. It's splashed all over Aussie women mags.
Same impact to the young urban female audience. Much more hip. Looks a lot less stupid.
The blokes still see the same car, same colour, in a more spirited "Zoom-Zoom" fun to drive theme in men's magazines.
Having said all that, the Myvi LE will continue to relatively well received. It's not like buyers have a lot of option within that price range anyway. This author suspects that the Myvi LE is created as a campaign model to drum of interest in the Myvi, which have been losing quite a bit of sales to its MPV cousin the Alza. The role of the Myvi is to arrest the sales cannibalization between Alza-Myvi. It is a so-called limited edition, with no specific mention on it being limited to how many units. Technically. every manufactured product is limited. You can run the product right up to the end of its lifecycle and still call it a limited edition model.
As a product, the LE is a relatively decent but the overly stereotypical marketing approach is a bit annoying. It's not like the LE is that different from the rest of the model variants anyway. They could have just advertise the new pink colour scheme, in a slightly more gender neutral manner, in women focused media and I think it would have done just fine. But of course, some will say that's just what I think.
If anyone wants to build a car that women appreciates, then make it :
a) Fuel efficient
b) Easy to park with audio or even visual parking assistance
c) Ergonomically designed place and safe place (covered) to keep their handbags in the front passenger side
d) "Shoe box" friendly boot organizer
e) Console box design that is suitable to keep cosmetic cases
f) Long service interval
g) Powerful air-conditioning
h) Keyless entry / Smart Entry - have you ever tried finding keys in a women's handbag?
i) Security features like an option to only unlock the driver's door rather than all doors (have you noticed how quickly women need to lock their car doors once they get in? And make the car turn on all interior and exterior lights when unlocking so the vehicle surrounding is clearly lit
j) Make it easy to mount air freshers or deodorizers, or better still, integrate them with the air-con vents
k) And lastly, make that headrest to be more long hair / pony-tail friendly
You can figure all these out just by paying attention to the women around you! Not listening to male managers. To add some girlie colours, floral themes in the interior and a vanity mirror and call it designed with women in mind is pushing things a bit too far towards the shallow thinking end.
1 comments:
lol, this is what you get what you have male only product planners.
"The survey says women likes vanity mirrors, so that's what we'll put in."
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