Automotive Industry
Course number: Marketing 1199
Market and Company
When people from other countries refer to Canada, the first couple of things that immediately come to mind would be the sport of hockey, extremely cold winters, and the finest down jacket brands. Nevertheless, people overlook one of the best prospective industries in Canada, the automotive industry. A majority of Canada's automotive industry is located in the Great Lakes region. It has the second-largest automobile-producing area in North America. Canada's automotive market is enormous and thriving because a variety of automobile brands from Germany, Japan, and the United States have established their own factories in Canada.
Size of the Market
Automotive statistics contain several sections in Canada in 2018. First, Canada assembled 2.04 million vehicles with total sales of $60.7 billion in manufacturing industries. In the retail trade, more than 2 million new cars were sold. As for international trade, the values of imports and exports of vehicles were $51.1 billion and $60.3 billion respectively
Major Segments and their Growth In the automobile industry, there are two major segments which are passenger cars and light trucks (pickup trucks, SUV). In 2018, the sales of new passenger cars were 577,711 units, and it declined a percentage of 9.7 by compared to 2017. However, sales of new light trucks increased by 0.6% from 1,398,975 to 1,407,281 in 2018. In general, the overall sales of vehicles in 2018 slightly lessened with a number of 2.6% in comparison to 2017. Albeit the market of passenger cars is not growing, the sales of light trucks climbed, and it increased at a fast rate within segments. Also, neither of those segments grew rapidly.
Product Life Cycle
The entire Canadian automotive industry in 2018 did not perform very well, because the sales diminished from 2017. To be more specific, the number of retail trade decreased by 41,000 units. In manufacturing industries, imports and exports declined in 2018 as well (AUTOMOTIVE). It is arbitrary to conclude that the life cycle of Canadian automobiles is declining now, only because the sales dropped in 2017. As a matter of fact, it is relatively difficult to analyse its life cycle stage due to the long-time existence of automobiles. Nevertheless, the growth of the Canadian automobile market has slowed a bit after 10 years (Global).
Macro-market Forces/Marketing Environment
Due to the Automotive industry being fairly large In Canada, there are provincial and territorial programs and Regional Development Agencies that offer support in financing as well as research. As Canada offers lavish funding and investment tax credits for automotive companies investing in Canada such as the SR&ED which provides refunds for expenditures on eligible R&D activity in Canada as well as income tax credits. These programs allow any automotive company to apply for loans, grants, and other resources provided by the provincial...