Chrysler Kills the Airflow to Go in a Different Direction | Page 11

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There’s a lot more going on with the minivan segment than the styling. The word “minivan” itself has become a no-no for a large swath of buyers. But there are people still interested in buying a minivan. So the crux of the job then becomes disentangling what it is that they want.

From the analyses we’ve done over the years, we found that minivan buyers are very traditional, very conservative, very family oriented, highly conscious about safety, very practical and in tune with the value of money. They view driving a minivan as a badge of honor, a way of “advertising” their traditional family values.

From that stand point, styling per se plays a minor role. The main appeal of the minivan is that it projects the image that its owners take very seriously their parenting —or grandparenting— role; take very seriously their duty of taking good care of their family. So giving Pacifica a swoopy styling and an upscale image had limited traction with them.

But FCA wasn’t really interested in appealing to traditional minivan buyers, anyway. They wanted to bring in new buyers. And that was the problem: very few people want to go into the segment at all. Even less these days when you can get a Honda Pilot that does much of what Pacifica does, without the stigma of a minivan.

The success of Sienna is that instead of dissing these buyers, it embraced their values.

Toyota’s reputation for reliability, durability and safety plays very well with them. Add to that Toyota’s constant preoccupation for making sure its customers know that they are getting top value for their money.

Making hybrid standard was a homerun: it plays very well with minivan buyers’ desire for efficiency, practicality and frugality.

Going forward the challenge for Chrysler is twofold:

1. Is there room for a traditional, frugal buyer in a company so obsessed with high margins? I’d like to think so
2. Is there an alignment between Chrysler’s new positioning and these highly frugal buyers? That’s up to Ms. Feuell to decide. Her choice will be colored by the fact that Chrysler sees itself as the father of the minivan

On this second point I’d like to stress the following: to some extent for most buyers it is less about the actual MSRP and more about what they are getting for their money.

Of course MSRP is very important. But the bigger problem, IMO, is that while FCA has been driving up prices relentlessly for 10+ years, it has also shrunk the value buyers get for their money —in terms of customer service, quality, warranty, etc.

You can get away with that strategy in some segments more than others. But it is tougher to pull off with minivan buyers.