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In Reply to: Options Jaguar Really Needs to offer the consumer posted by Unless it wishes to lose purchases on March 24, 2002 at 17:07:55:
1) A lot of people here see it as a positive if Jaguar actually sells few X-Types because most people prefer its competators, and don't WANT Jaguar to do anything to make the car more attractive to others. I'm not talking about opposing changes that dilute its quality or charactor, but options that would let them still have the same thing they have now but let others get an X-Type configured more suitably to their own tastes. This strikes me as strange. The positive kind of exclusivity is when you've got something many want but few can get - not when you've got something nobody else wants. Let's look at an extreme but familiar example - the infamous Ford Edsel. Before anybody gets in an uproar, I am NOT calling the X-Type an Edsel. The Edsel illustrates the point, though. Ford had high hopes for this car, but almost nobody wanted one. I'm sure that some of the people who did felt "exclusive" because they had something different, but the car was not a commercial success and Ford dropped it. Of course it's a collectors item now, but at the time it was a flop and its name became synonomous with "flop" for a generation. I'm sure that what Ford wanted was for it to be the best selling car in its class - not something almost nobody wanted so that the handful who did could feel "exclusive".
2) People here get offended even by constructive criticism intended to help the Jaguar brand. I guess peoples egos and self-image get very wrapped up in their cars, so they take it personally. I'm sure the management at Jaguar doesn't, though.
The person posting here under the name Insider is a Jaguar employee, and has told us that management has him reporting on what is written here. This is basic market research. I work for a consumer products company, and I can tell you that the recipe for success is "the consumer is boss". I'm 100% certain that Jaguar wants to make the X-Type the best seller in its class (while still making a profit, of course). Some of the package grouping is no doubt based on manufacturing efficiency (although with today's technology I'm sure more consumer choice is the wave of the future rather than less). Jaguar will certainly tweek the packaging (and other aspects of the car) in future model years based on consumer opinion - when you decide whether or not to buy you are voting, and they care why you voted for the competition if you did. If they can figure out how to make you (and people like you) happy without busting the budget or making an even larger group of consumers unhappy, they will do it. I'm pretty sure the last people they will listen to are the ones who would forgo buying the car just because too many other people have one:)
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