Re: old design was oilheads-digest V1 #47

[Steve Makohin <wateredg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 1/6/04 7:35 PM, rennsport@xxxxxxxxx rennsport@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

>On Tuesday, Jan 6, 2004, at 19:08 US/Eastern, Steve Makohin wrote:
>
>> Ducati, for example, has a market share that is smaller than BMW
>> Motorrad's, and they have no plans to surpass BMW in sales.
>
>Yes but, Ducati started from the basement as far as sales go. At least 
>they are moving in the right direction.

I suspect that BMW Motorrad also stared "from the basement as far as 
sales go". Don't they all? How does this relate to our discussion at hand?



>>  Apple
>> Computer Inc., has a diminutive market share of around 3% (and
>> declining), though they continue to sell enough merchandise to remain
>> profitable and chuckle in the face of the "Apple Is Dead" crowd (who 
>> have been saying that since around 1986 or so).
>
>Of course Apple would love to increase their market share, why do you 
>think they started the switch campaign? Also I do not think Apple's 
>market share is declining, finally.

If you have information that corroborates your statements, please share. 
While it may be possible that people at Apple "would love to increase 
their market share" (as in "wishful thinking"), I see no evidence that 
Apple Computer Inc., has a corporate objective to increase market share. 
To the contrary, Apple has distanced themselves from shrinking market 
share comparisons for close to a decade now. In the early 1990s at 
Macworld Expo (San Francisco), Apple Executives openly stated that they 
must break the 15% market share ceiling, or they'll become a niche 
manufacture. That sentiment could be vocalized at a time when Apple had a 
market share of 12% and climbing slowly. Here we are, almost a decade and 
a half later, and Apple is clinging to a ~3% share. It has slipped about 
one point from about a year ago.

Apple has corporate objectives to increase _sales_, not market share. If 
you speak to people working at or with Apple, such as Area Sales Manager, 
they will tell you their quotas have increased (i.e., an increase in 
forecasted sales), but not so much as to keep pace with the growth in the 
personal computing market, nor to surpass it (i.e., Apple market share 
will continue to decline). 

To bring this back into the context of my response to your comments, BMW 
Motorrad, like many other companies, does not necessarily need to have an 
increase in market share in order to have a very healthy increase in 
sales. The two are not necessarily related.





>> So far, I have not seen any information that indicates BMW Motorrad has
>> set out to _significantly_ increase their market share. If you have
>> access to such information, please share it with us because I am eager 
>> to learn of it, as I am sure are others on this list, as well as the 
>> "other" list. Cheers.
>
>What about BMW targeting the women riders? The fast growing segment of 
>the moto public. Is that not to increase market share?

What about it? So far you have not demonstrated a causal relationship. 
Here's an example of why this is the case: Say that ABC Company makes 
widgets, and they own 3% of the widget market. They decide to expand 
their market (NOT the same thing as "market share") by making specialized 
widgets for the blind because studies have shown that blind and visually 
impaired consumers represent the fastest growing widget market. Does this 
mean that ABC Company will increase their total widget market share? 
Hardly! Here are some reasons why this could be so:

 o Widget market for visually impaired, although growing at an annual rate
   of 30% (fastest growing segment of widget consumers), only accounts for
   2% of the entire widget market. Current market segment is minuscule
   compared to the entire widget market. Fast growing? Yes. Big? No.

 o The accurate figures showing that visually impaired widget consumers 
are
   the fastest growing market segment, depict a trend that shows a
   statistically significant increase only within the past 3 years, though
   visually impaired widget consumers have been tracked for the past 4
   decades. We are seeing a relatively short trend so far. Also, there is
   no reliable information nor any realistic scenario (upon which a
   Business Case can be built) that demonstrates the objective probability
   that visually impaired widget consumers will ever increase beyond 10%
   of the total widget market.

 o The visually impaired widget market is very difficult to penetrate
   because XYZ Company, the first to address that market segment, carried
   out an early full market assault and captured nearly 75% of that 
market.
   In fact, XYZ Company is known as the visually impaired widget maker
   of choice, and analysts expect them to own virtually all of that market
   by the end of the decade.

As you can see, a manufacturer expanding their market (i.e., catering to 
a wider variety of consumers) does not necessarily translate into an 
increase in market share. The two are unrelated unless there is strong 
evidence to support the belief why expanding that specific market will 
likely increase over all market share.

To bring this back into the context of my response to your comments, I 
have seen no indications that BMW Motorrad has a corporate objective of 
increasing global or North American motorcycle market share (mind you, I 
am not arguing for this point, so I have not dug for it either). If you 
have something that _proves_ that BMW has adopted this objective, please 
share. Any official BMW statement or document to this effect would 
suffice.

- -Steve

 Oakville, Ontario, Canada
 2000 R1100S/ABS, Mandarin

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