FROM
LUXURY
TO
PRESTIGE
BRAND
EXPLORATION
OF
T E A M 1 1 -‐ C H R Y S T A L C A I N S H I A R L A & M Y U R A N K A N G A
U N I V E R S I T Y O F F L O R I D A , I M B A F 1 4 I 2
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Audi positions itself touting its technology (“Innovation through Technology”), strong
engineering (“Truth in Engineering”), speed, bravery (“Bravery. It’s what defines us.”), and
uncompromised luxury through its most recent ad with Ricky Gervais that closes with,
“Stay uncompromised.” Audi’s model offerings target multiple consumer segments while
seeking to provide customers with the world’s leading premium vehicles. Audi prides itself
as the progressive line within The Volkswagen Group. Further, Audi seeks to produce
models that anticipate clients’ visions and desires to provide sustainable, augmented, and
potential benefits to customers while minimizing service quality gaps.
Sprechen sie Audi?
Online Research -‐ Methodology
To increase our understanding of how consumers view Audi, online research was
conducted on vehicle consumer review websites such as Edmunds.com, JDPower.com, and
Autotrader.com. We extended our research to include social media sites such as Twitter,
Facebook, and Instagram to better understand customer sentiment regarding Audi through
social media activity.
Online Research – Vehicle Consumer Review Websites & Forums
Vehicle consumer review websites are typically organized by model; therefore, it was
difficult to perform specific searches such as “Audi.” However, through perusing various
Audi model reviews, we were able to identify keywords consumers used when expressing
their view about Audi. Some common phrases include “technology,” “performance,”
“luxury,” “sport,” “power,” “speed,” “engineering,” and “quality.” These identified terms
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were subsequently used in our expanded web research (such as car forums) as well as in
our social media research.
We broadened our search term list to include “luxury,” “luxury vehicles,” “luxury sedans,”
and “luxury SUVS” in conjunction with competitor names to begin to paint the picture of
how Audi performs compared to competitors.
Generally, the sentiment surrounding Audi was positive. Many noted that Audis perform
well, are fun to drive, and exhibit great detail, quality, and workmanship. Some passionate
consumers reviewed their experience with their Audi vehicles:
• “I had no idea diesels were so much fun!” –Audi A3 review
• “You can feel the superior quality and craftsmanship in material, workmanship, and
engineering in every detail and step of the gas pedal in the Audi. I love the quick
acceleration in Sport mode and the refined executive styling! I look forward to and
enjoy driving it each and every day!” –Audi Q5 review
• “Great timeless design, wonderful interior design and material quality, great step in
height and the list goes on.” –Audi S5 review
Although negative sentiment was low, some commented on the poor multimedia interface
(MMI) and navigation system, sometimes describing it as being “unintuitive” or describing
instances where the maintenance feature of the MMI interface gave false notifications. By
comparing cross-‐website consumer keywords and comments, we collected the following
pros and cons list for Audi vehicles:
• Pros: Top-‐notch interior craftsmanship; sporty, nimble, & capable handling; Head-‐
turning style; Upscale interior; Superior cabin quality and design; Efficient and
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punchy engines
• Cons: Below-‐average cargo capacity; Unintuitive control layout and navigation
Online Research – Social Media
We extended our research to include social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and
Twitter. Tools such as TagBoard.com were used to collate these three popular social media
websites and acquire a real-‐time snapshot.1 This method provided more insight into
consumers’ impressions toward Audi vehicles. Further, we used tools like
SocialMention.com to gather sentiment information regarding Audi’s brand. Our social
media findings were consistent with car forums and vehicle consumer reviews: people are
passionate about Audi’s vehicles, excited about future advancements, find them luxurious,
fun to drive, and often describe the R8 as their “dream car.”
The two photos above come from Twitter and Facebook, respectively. The photo on the left
1 #tagboard, “About Tagboard,” Tagboard.com, Accessed: July 1, 2014, https://about.tagboard.com/overview.
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depicts a gentleman capturing a luxurious watch and “2 fine cars” including an Audi. It is a
great representation of the how consumers associate Audi’s brand with luxury, quality, and
good workmanship, matching the depicted watch. The photo on the right is consistent with
the consumer reviews that describe Audis as fun or exciting to drive. A blonde woman is
driving her Audi and hashtags #Audi #convertible #cruising, along with #funinthesun.
She clearly views her Audi convertible as a key piece to her fun and happy day.
The photos below are from Twitter, Twitter, and Instagram, respectively. The first two
photos show consumers capturing candid pictures of the Audi R8 in action. The first post
speaks positively about the curvy body design. She hashtags #Audi #R8, then describes this
car as being her “dream car.” We have included the second photo because this type of post
was one of the most common in our online social media research. The vehicle is described
as “beautiful” and again as a “dream car.” The third photo depicts an Audi TT at either a
product reveal or car show. The picture was posted with hashtags #AudiTT #audi
#quattro. The post says, “This one will be sick!!!” demonstrating the general anticipation of
Audi’s up-‐and-‐coming products due to their passion for design, technology, and
engineering.
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We were careful to not only include the highest echelon offerings from Audi in our social
media search. We also wanted to know what people were saying concerning the more
affordable models such as the A3, S5, A6 and Q5. We found that the same level of pride is
shared in these models as well. Many photos showed consumers washing and various
angles of consumers driving their cars. The two photos below demonstrate that consumers
still view these models as strong products from the Audi line. Both of the photos below are
from Instagram. The first depicts an A3 with the tagline, “Got this bad boy back on the road
today” with hashtags #Audi, #A3, #quattro, and #beast. The second photo demonstrates
the speed of the more affordable models. The tagline is “Just doing a lousy 200kms on the
autobahn” with hashtags #audi #A6 #200kms #autobahn.
In our general social media research, we found few negative posts surrounding Audi;
however, we needed to devise a means of measuring customer sentiment. Enter the online
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tool SocialMention.com.2 This tool collates various websites, micro blogs, forums, and social
media sites across the web and allows users to search for specific terms. It has several
different algorithms that help produce statistics about the search term including:
• Strength – the likelihood that your brand is discussed in social media. The algorithm
captures phrases mentioned in the last 24 hours divided by total possible mentions
• Sentiment – ratio of comments that are positive compared to comments that are
negative
• Passion – measure of the likelihood users will repetitively post keywords
• Reach – measure of range of influence; number of unique authors talking about your
brand divided by the total number of mentions
• Average Time Per Mention
• Last Mention
• Top Keywords – most frequently used keywords and the number of times they are
mentioned
• Top Hashtags – most frequently used hashtags and the number of times they are
mentioned
With these metric definitions in mind, SocialMention.com demonstrated that at a specific
point in time, “Audi” had 100% Strength (or likelihood that it was discussed in social
media), 7:1 sentiment (7 positive posts per 1 negative post), 20% Passion (percent of
repetitive posting about Audi), and 95% reach. On average, users were posting about Audi
every 14 seconds. The most common keywords were “audi,” “billionaires,” “chrome,”
“Porsche,” “gold,” “nurotag,” and “sportback.” The most common hashtags were #audi,
2 socialmention*, “Frequently Asked Questions,” SocialMention.com, Accessed: July 1, 2014, http://socialmention.com/faq.
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#quattro, #pdk, #porsche, #discovery, #functionandform, #whisleterwheels, #sosw,
#audiR8, and #functionform.
Finally, we wanted to use social media to determine the “voice” of Audi’s brand in
comparison to its competitors. To do this, we used a proprietary tool (Python programming
language based software) to “scrape” information from Twitter. We searched for instances
when luxury car brands were mentioned on Twitter. In two days, over 200,000 mentions of
luxury car brands were collected. This data was then visualized in a tool called Tableau.3
Each spike was noted along with the time that the most comments occurred. Over this
sample, the Audi brand experienced the most mentions of its own brand as well as the
highest spike compared to other brands. Therefore, the voice of Audi among social media is
at the top of its class.
3 tableau software, “About Us,” Tableau Software, Accessed: July 1, 2014, http://www.tableausoftware.com/about.
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Online Research – Implications & Recommendations
Through our online research, we have found that Audi is a leader when it comes to social
media presence. Audi maintains 14 verified Twitter accounts. Among these Twitter
accounts, Audi shares company news, interacts with people for customer support, and even
makes appropriate jokes that uphold their brand image with consumers. For example,
recently, Justin Bieber was spotted driving a Cheetah Spotted R8. @Audi responded to this
post with: “Look Away. Just look away.” Further, Audi maintains a handful of Instagram
accounts; most popular is @audiusa, where it focuses solely on posting photos of products.
They do not announce promotions, contests, or deals on their Instagram page as many
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other corporations do. Yet, they have a high engagement and ‘like’ ratio per user and per
photo. Further, they post once a day, maintaining their momentum and presence on
Instagram.4 We believe this approach has been effective and has proven itself through the
findings we have presented. Audi has been able to achieve high sentiment, high reach, the
highest number of mentions, and high customer engagement and interaction even without
the need to solicit customer engagement through tangential methods like promotions or
contests. Instead, customers have shown genuine love and appreciation for Audi as well as
ownership pride by incorporating vehicles into their lives. Our recommendation is that
Audi continue to maintain their dominant presence and vigilantly seek new strategies to
improve their voice of the customer.
4 Bamburic, Mihaita, “Instagram is Used By 40 Percent of Big Brands, but Only Audi Uses It Correctly,” BetaNews, Inc., Accessed: July 9, 2014, http://betanews.com/2012/08/09/instagram-‐is-‐used-‐by-‐40-‐percent-‐of-‐big-‐brands-‐but-‐only-‐audi-‐uses-‐it-‐correctly/.
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Treffen Audi-Kunden
Qualitative Study -‐ Methodology
An understanding of the general online customer sentiment towards the Audi brand
allowed the research to expand by directly speaking to consumers. In depth interviews
were conducted with 11 customers with varied ethnic, age, gender, and vehicle ownership
backgrounds. The questions that guided the interview process were developed based on
our findings from the online research. Gaps and areas of interest guided our question
selection. Our goal was to identify customer brand perceptions, images, awareness,
associations, loyalty, and the general personality that people project upon Audi.
Qualitative Study – Interview Sequencing
The interview questions were presented to participants in a systematic manner. First
customers were required to answer demographic information to categorize responses.
Participants were not notified that they would be questioned about Audi or vehicles until
the appropriate questions were presented, alleviating biases. Next, top of mind attributes
related to two of Audi’s primary goals – Prestige and Quality – were requested. An ideal
description of a vehicle was requested to identify baseline traits. Participants were then
directed to mention their top of mind vehicle brands followed by luxury brands to identify
perceived competitors. To capture consumer opinions on the greatest competition,
respondents were asked to rank the luxury brands in terms of quality. Next, we wanted to
delve deeper into consumers’ perceived brand personalities and understand the
psychological, functional, and product feature benefits sought in vehicles, along with the
personal values customers expected. To achieve this, we presented questions that
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requested traits, characteristics, and associations with particular vehicles and luxury
brands. Animal characteristic and human attributes were also requested as a deeper
explanation of how people felt about luxury vehicle brands. To conclude interviews, we
introduced questions directly related to the Audi brand. We used brand recall and
recognition questions to capture information that may not be at the forefront of customers’
minds. We were particularly interested in identifying: key associations by requesting a
single word describing the brand, awareness of ads with any memorable scenes, asking
about related brands and global location ties for brand hierarchy recognition, and relative
competitor knowledge including related rankings on perceived sales values, performance,
and popularity.
Qualitative Study – Customer Interview Results: Top of Mind Attributes
Seeking the meaning that customers extract from the word ‘Prestige,’ we found that quality
was closely associated as portrayed in the word map generated from interview results.5
Other notable results include money related descriptions, ‘honor,’ ‘fame,’ and repute.
5 Feinberg, Jonathan, “Wordle – Create Your Own,” Wordle.net, Accessed: July 9, 2014, http://www.wordle.net/.
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Delving deeper into top of mind attributes, we found that customers envision impulsive
images of an ideal generic vehicle as a ‘sleek black sedan.’ Within the luxury car market,
consumers found BMW as the top of mind brand with Audi at a close second. The top four
brands are distinctively shown in the frequency word map below.6
Qualitative Study – Customer Interview Results: Brand Personalities
Our findings also showed that customers easily distinguish vehicle brands with human
attributes and animal characteristics. Audi was closely tied to a Cheetah/Leopard and said
to be fast and classy. Mercedes was distinguished as a Tiger as it is no longer the king of
luxury brands. BMW was said to be a Lion, being a dominant, powerful, and appealing
6 Feinberg, Jonathan, “Wordle – Create Your Own,” Wordle.net, Accessed: July 9, 2014, http://www.wordle.net/.
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brand. Moving into Audi specific results, we found that people most likely described Audi
with a single word that related to the high cost or the style, sleek, sexy appeal.
Qualitative Study – Customer Interview Results: Brand Associations and Perceptions
When asked to about features that customers relate to attributes and associations with
other products or brands, we found that customers were well aware of Audi’s German
roots, engineering focus, inherently higher luxury prices, and the resulting quality. We
were pleasantly surprised to find that most interviewees also knew of Audi’s Volkwagen
hertitage, diesel engine offerings, and AWD exclusivity. Customers identified BMW and
Lexus to be competitors while estimating that Audi popularity was highest in Europe. Most
interestingly, many participants associated the Olympics with Audi due to the 4-‐ring logo.
When asked about advertisements, we were somewhat disappointed to find that most
people had not seen Audi commericials or did not recall/recognize any unique attributes.
However, standout memories for those that did recall were impressive LED headlights and
a Superbowl ad.
In terms of perceptions, participants identified and ranked several brands for popularity
and sales. We caputured the results of these perceptions using the perceptual map below.7
7 Nielson, Jake, “Perceptual Maps: A Step By Step Guide to Analyzing Value, Competition, and Opportunities,” The Innovative Manager – Management Tools for Innovative Professionals, Accessed: July 9, 2014, http://www.theinnovativemanager.com/perceptual-‐map/.
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Customers correctly identified BMW as a market leader but were somewhat less optimistic
about Audi’s market standing and reach.
Qualitative Study – Implications & Recommendations
The qualitative study findings demonstrate that Audi customers understand the prestige,
quality, and engineering brand focus. Though the vehicles are perceived to be expensive,
customers show satisfaction with products that they receive due to workmanship, style,
and performance. German engineering has been viewed as an important selling point and
the Volkswagen heritage is generally appreciated. Customers are also well aware of Audi’s
competitors in BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, etc.
However, we have found that Audi’s commercials are failing to resonate with the consumer.
Tying the Audi brand with the Olympics has been identified as a major opportunity and
presenting an image of sleek, black, visually appealing sedans would boost the brand
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image. Laddering techniques such as leveraging the inadvertent fanaticism surrounding
LED headlight technology and educating customers about the benefits associated with
luxury price tags would allow the company to reach more customers. Finally, Audi must
promote recent sales success and popularity to help consumers recognize their market
dominance and achieve top of mind brand status.
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Wie sonst kann Audi Sie erreichen?
Quantitative Study -‐ Methodology
As we progressed in our research, a quantitative survey was distributed and completed by
69 out of 102 possible consumers. Our intent was to improve upon our findings with
information measures related to specific beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behaviors
towards the Audi brand. To meet these needs, questions were posed to participants in the
form of a Qualtrics survey in a similarly ordered fashion as our interviews.8 The
questionnaire was authored with these needs in mind and addressed ideal locations for
Audi driving, likes/dislike about the brand, agreement/disagreement for imposed
attributes and associations, sources of brand improvement and expansion, prioritizing
luxury vehicle features, and identifying purchase decision criteria. Nearly 20% of the
participants own a luxury vehicle and 70% indicated that they were planning to purchase a
vehicle within 5 years. We had a 70/30 distribution of males to females with a fairly even
distribution of age groups ranging from 16 to over 51 years old. Questions were posed on a
6-‐points scale, ranking, or open-‐ended format.
Quantitative Study – Customer Survey Results: General Vision and Beliefs
Most consumers favored sedan and sports vehicle body styles, envisioned Audi vehicles
ideally driven in the Metropolitan during a night on the town or on the Autobahn, and
correctly identified BMW and Mercedes as the brand’s #1 and #2 competitors. In terms of
Audi’s strategic goals, participants strongly believe that Audi is a Premium brand, defines
innovation, serves as an attractive employer worldwide, shows continuous growth, and
shapes the brand through dealerships. An interest finding suggests that customers do not 8 Qualtrics, “Who We Are,” Qualtrics, LLC., Accessed: July 1, 2014, http://www.qualtrics.com/about/.
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strongly associate Audi’s strategic goals with luxury, truth in engineering, or innovation
through technology. Finally, lower prices were cited as the single attribute that would most
appeal to consumers as an improvement on the brand/products.
Quantitative Study – Customer Survey Results: Open-‐ended Likes/Dislikes, Brand Associations, Product Attributes, & Purchase Decision Attributes
When asked to describe their strongest like and dislike for the Audi brand in a single word,
survey participants responded:
• Like – Beauty/Design and Performance • Dislike – Expensive/Cost
Customers were presented with brand associations and asked to rank them according to
the least and greatest agreement as to their fit with the Audi Brand (surprisingly the word
‘affordable’ received more identification than words in the least identification list).
Greatest Identification 1. Expensive 2. Luxury 3. German 4. Wealth 5. Sleek 6. Classy 7. Sophisticated 8. Fast 9. Beautiful 10. Overpriced
Least Identification 1. Suzuki (VW family) 2. Japanese 3. Honda 4. Nissan 5. Toyota 6. Skoda (VW family) 7. British 8. Scania (VW family) 9. Lamborghini (VW family) 10. World Series
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The most and least appealing product attributes for Audi vehicles were selected as:
Most Appealing 1. Cell phone integration system 2. Transmission choices 3. Premium sound system 4. Electronic stability and traction
control 5. Engine size variety 6. Heated/cooled seats 7. Multi-‐zone climate control 8. Rear-‐view camera 9. Lane assist 10. Adaptive cruise control
Least Appealing 1. Electronic retractable floorboards 2. Video screens 3. Wooden accents 4. Chrome exterior trim accents 5. Decorative inlays 6. Heated/cooled steering wheel 7. Voice recognition 8. XM radio 9. Variable steering modes/Magnetic
shock technology 10. Auto-‐parking assistance system
Most importantly, customers reported the following ranked purchase decision attributes
for Audi vehicles. Hybrid attributes and dealership traits play a vital role in vehicle
purchase decisions.
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Quantitative Study – Implications & Recommendations
The quantitative findings further confirm that Audi’s marketing, advertising, and
promotion campaign is failing to reach customers in terms of their awareness and
recognition. At the fundamental level, consumers do believe in Audi as a strong Premium
brand, and have begun to echo the executive rebranding strategic goals such as continuous
growth, defining innovation, and being an attractive worldwide employer.
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Audi’s recent move to redesign their vehicles presents an opportunity to expand their
product line and appeal to a wider customer base. The following chart provides customer
impressions on the most desired new body styles.
Affordability still reigns, as customers are interested in a cheaper sports vehicle and
several hybrid options. Moving forward, Audi should focus heavily on their advertising
campaign to provide memorable images and reemphasize the brand’s core value such as
“Innovation through technology,” “Truth in Engineering,” the Prestige perspective, and
their 2014 market position as a dominant Premium brand. Technology, design, and style
have vaulted Audi to a strong brand equity position, allowing them to compete directly
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with BMW and Mercedes. Consumers are beginning to internalize these congruities;
therefore, re-‐positioning would not be a suggested course of action. Educating consumers
on Audi’s brand heritage is all that stands in the way of their ultimate goal as the global #1
Premium brand and sustaining excellent brand equity.