Targeting a Small Car Niche

When are less sales more?

In today's Wall Street Journal, an article described the marketing plans for Toyota's Scion. It seems that they are limiting next year's production to below this year's sales and shifting budget to event and experiential avenues. They even find MySpace as being too mainstream - imagine that, a car manufacture eschewing social media as so 2005.

Typical sales analyses and forecasts usually end up in trying to justify increases in unit sales or share under the premise that more is always better. It takes judgment and executive decisions (and a bit of moxi) to reject the spreadsheet models in favor of what's important.