Question

Describe the Google Self-Driving Car brand marketing mix during the last year or two. What marketing “P’s” or “P” does the Google Self-Driving brand focus on?

Answer 1

Google’s self driving car project aka Waymo was launched in 2009. The marketing proposition has changed over the time as the technology has developed. Over time, google has focused on conceptualizing a revolutionary technology of self-driving cars to improving the self-driving aspect of the car to bring it to a minimum required level to making it a commercially viable model. At current stage, the main challenge is to make a commercial success while continuing to improve the technological aspect.

The 5 P’s are as follows-

Product- the most important P for Google is the product. Google has been a pioneer in this field and has the advantage of early movers. It will have the advantage of setting the expectations of the markets for at least the first generation self drive vehicles. Google is a tech company and not a car manufacturer. Hence, its focus is not on the car aspect but the technology driving the car. The focal points of their products are safety, reliability and predictability. At this stage has almost no competitors in the market as they are developing a new product.

Price- price is not as important focus as price. This is a totally new product and has a no comparable product in the market. Hence, Google can set the price of their product as a benchmark. They have a lower bound as defined by the regular manual drive cars. However, there is no upside for pricing. Over the years, Google has introduced the products to common people at a very affordable price range. Unlike Apple, their pricing strategy is not to focus on very high margin but on mass spread of the product. Their pricing is based not only of the standalone product. Their pricing is based on usability integration. Google has an advantage of being able to integrate their new product – self driving car with the current technology that most of the users are already using such as phone, wearable tech, smart home systems and so on. Google will focus on improving profitability through a integrated solution and not by charging a very high margin on standalone product.

Place- Google will expect the highest sales in the area where the tech giants are situated. These are the places where the initially performed the on road tests of the vehicles. Initially, the products will be only sold in the USA. The focus will be on the northern and Eastern side of the US and this is where are they are opening their new factory as well.

Promotion- Google piqued the interest of the people while they were test driving their vehicle. Meerly the fact that the tech giants such as Google and Apple are competing with each other to enter in to this new area has got people interested in them. Google is a trusted and widespread name in common household and has a glamour of its own. Hence, it does not need to spend too much on branding this product separately. It will have to create a buzz in terms of introducing a new product while marketing. This will be the focus area for the company as they have a new product which the buyers have nothing to compare to. However, they need to market the car in such a way that even their future competitors such as Apple wont eat their market leadership position.

People- Google will focus on the people of technological and entrepreneurial background as their first customers. These are the people always willing to buy and try new products and technology. Google has a reliable and comprehensive customer care system. For this new technology, they will have to develop customer support solutions both online and offline. The vehicles will need to have service centers distributed over the areas where their users are situated. The customer support will comprise of both assistance with the mechanical functioning of the vehicle and software support. The company break down the 2 aspects and divide the support function and leverage its vehicle partner’s network for the mechanical support.