Citroën ’s Marketing

PSA Peugeot Citroen group was born in 1976. Peugeot absorbed Citroen. The group knew  difficulties at the beginning of the Eighties, due to the oil crisis of the end of the Seventies. PSA then will develop a synergy between its marks and will develop projects on the same bases, to limit the production costs. Through the Group's coherent product plan and coordinated international strategies, the two volume brands have distinct but complementary personalities. In the fields of marketing, sales and customer relations, Peugeot and Citroën have the freedom to conduct distinct and – in many cases – competing policies. However, for reasons of efficiency and cost control, the Group's technical, industrial, administrative and financial apparatus is unified.

The office of tourism of Salbris organizes an exposure on the mythical car, elected "car of the century" in the year 2000: 2 CV Citroen and on the movement of sympathy which it generates. The public will be able to discover photographs, newspaper cuttings, an exposure of plates rallies, miniatures and tables. The stress was laid more particularly on the world and national meetings organized by the Club of the 2 CV of Orléanais. There are currently 150 clubs in France and 300 in the rest of the world, to Japan and in
Australia. These clubs gather the amateurs of 2 CV and contribute to the maintenance and to the safeguard of this car, a part of the French inheritance. For the technician, it is the most intelligent car, best adapted, a masterpiece of innovation and marketing. For the travelling acrobat, it is more than one car, it is an art of living. It is this way of life which the exposure recalls that the office of tourism will accommodate, life with Deuche! Citroen always keeps a good public image.

The car manufacturers combine technology and robotics today, (this one become more and more "tendency"), to collect the attention  of the public. We can see this phenomenon with the last publicity for the C4. the brand implements a robot  transformer. This one thirty seconds duration commercial, results from the cabinet of creation of Citroen and the office of the agency euro RSCG of London, which was produced by Spy Films (
Toronto).Marty  Kudelka, choreographer of Justin Timberlake, agreed to endorse the role of "C4 Robot". He spent two months in the studios of animation of Pixar. The advertising for C4 cost several million dollars…

André Citroën is the founder of one of the most important car manufacturer and he introduced mass production in Europe.In 1922, he decided "to travel" throughout the world in order to make known his brand and cars. We  call those expeditions  “Les Croisières Citroën”. Those are initially technical, diplomatic and human adventures. Bringing back testimonys on badly known civilizations, they locate also routes for the cars. The first cruising started in 1922 and results in the crossing of the
Sahara. Then there were the missions
Central Africa, Center-Asia…

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=966391983666I chose to administer a questionnaire about Citroen’s Marketing with an aim of knowing the image of this brand among students of the ESC. I collected 91 questionnaires from students with an average age of 22 years old 50% of whom were male and 50%  female. Indeed the brand had a bad image near  young people during the Nineties. I wanted to know if this image had disappeared following  Citroen’s  efforts at communication .Initially I chose to see if people knew the brand. I asked two questions one concerning the first name of the founder and the other about the logo. I noticed  that the majority of the people questioned (86.9%)  knew the colours of the logo. And only 71.1% of the people knew the first name of Andre Citroen. I thought that this question was simple but apparently the young people  don’t know this emblematic man very well. Then I spoke about the relation between the products of Citroen and the consumer. For 56% of the people the most representative car of the brand is the “2 CV”. It explains why the brand has  this convivial and out of date image near the students. That means Citroen is not able to be detached from its image of the Forties. However 50.5% of the people know more than 5 different Citroen cars.Which  means that Citroen has made its products know by means of its advertising campaigns.Finally I spoke about the communication of Citroen. 18.9% think that the communication of Citroen is not satisfactory. Citroen is not convincing enough in its ads. Last year in 2005 Citroën won the bronze lion at the
Cannes advertising film festival with “the dancer”. Apparently the consumers did not know that Citroen had had this award. Only 50.5% of the people appreciate the innovations which Citroen propose. Even if the mark had had a very innovative image at the beginning of the century. This car manufacturer must assert face to his competitors.In conclusion we can say that in spite of the efforts at communication of these last years Citroen does not have good image yet, among the young drivers.