Marketing Report: Analyzing FIAT's 500X Crossover Campaign

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of FIAT's international marketing management, focusing on the launch of the 500X crossover. It begins with an executive summary and an introduction to the case study, highlighting FIAT's partnership with YouTube to enhance brand awareness and engagement. The report then delves into a literature review, critically examining the issues and challenges faced by FIAT in marketing its products, including stiff competition, balancing branding with short-term sales, and adapting to the evolving automobile culture. A marketing plan is developed, considering strategies like organic page views, content marketing (blogs, videos, eBooks), and competitor analysis. The report applies marketing theories to practice by evaluating FIAT's marketing mix (product, place, price, promotion) and analyzing the three elements of consumer analysis: affect and cognition, consumer behavior, and consumer environment. The conclusion summarizes the findings and offers recommendations to improve FIAT's marketing strategies, such as increasing visibility on social media, SEO, and analyzing consumer behavior for targeted marketing. The report utilizes various academic sources to support its arguments and findings.

Running head: INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MANAGAMENT
INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MANAGAMENT
Student’s Name
University Name
Author note

1INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MANAGAMENT
Executive summary
The purpose of this report is to study the various aspects of international marketing
management of the largest automobile manufacturer FIAT and analyze the product launch
mentioned in the case study. It critically analyzes the current issues and challenges faced by
the business organization, the changing global business environment. It develops a marketing
plan with regard to the organization. It analyzes the actual practices of the business
organization, evaluates the marketing mix for the organization and states the relationship
between the three elements of consumer analysis and explains the ways in which this element
can help the business organization to develop effective marketing strategies. Lastly, it
provides recommendations to improve the marketing strategies and concludes the report.

2INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MANAGAMENT
Introduction
FIAT is an Italian automobile manufactured. The company had launched 500X
crossover. In order to maintain its competitiveness in the stiff competitive market, the
company strategically partnered with YouTube to produce advertisement and measure the
image of the ads in terms of brand awareness, search volume and ad recall. The company
aims to identify the target audience and encourages customer engagement with the use of
advertisement of 500X crossover, FIAT stream videos on YouTube before launching on other
medias to lift its brand awareness, search volume and ad recall (Think with Google. 2016).
The purpose of this report is to critically analyze the current issues in marketing, the
challenges faces in the marketing management. It develops a marketing plan to support the
analysis. Further, it evaluates the marketing mix for FIAT and evaluates the relationship
between the elements of consumer analysis and develops marketing strategies. Lastly, it
recommends strategies for the organization and concludes the report.
2. Literature review
a) Critical review on the issues of marketing
According to Morschett, Schramm-Klein and Zentes (2015), the major issues that are faced
by FIAT automobile manufacture are stiff competition, low marginal production cost and
over capacity. The business organization faced difficulties and problems while maintaining a
balance between marketing its manufactured products, branding its products and encouraging
short term sales volume. Further, in the opinion of Ford and Leonidou (2013), the business
organization faces issues dealing with simultaneous pressure for being a customer oriented
business, efficient products and building its brand value. Marketing the manufactured
products requires proper understanding of the automobile culture in the future and

3INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MANAGAMENT
cooperating with the other industries. Hence, the business organization faces issues applying
the modern view of prevailing competition in the market.
b) Challenges of marketing management practices of FIAT
According to Gilligan and Hird (2013), FIAT uses value based and positioning
strategy for the purpose of marketing its product in the highly competitive marketing
environment. It aims to create an image among its target customers and enrich them with
experience in the mind of the target audiences. The company strategically stream video and
YouTube and measures the incremental impact of its campaign. However, as mentioned by
Baker (2014), FIAT can face various challenging with the current management practices.
Different model of FIAT has a different set of target audience. It can face challenge to
identify the users watching the YouTube ads and have a better understanding of the viewers
viewing the YouTube ad. Another challenge that can be faced by FIAT is analyze the actual
exposure of the YouTube ads among its specific target audience (Kotler et al. 2015). Growing
YouTube ads is another concern for the company. It needs to balance the user privacy with
the goals and objectives of FIAT.
c) Marketing plan
The automobile industry is highly sensitive to various financial and economic conditions
such as customer confidence, disposal income of the consumers, price of crude oil, level of
competition in the market and fluctuations in market. As mentioned by Westwood (2013),
the main goal of the copany to attract the viewers on social media platforms through ads and
educate them about the products offered and converts them into leads. By implementing
strategies to use organic page views and tracking the website visits, FIAT can analyze the
effectiveness of its marketing strategies. It was argued by Perreault (2018), FIAT can

4INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MANAGAMENT
consider posting blogs, effective YouTube videos, eBooks and info graphics. The content
strategy of the organization might include free channels and platforms. It needs to develop a
marketing budget considering a full time marketing consultant, sponsorships or freelance
fees. Further, the major competitors must be taken into considerations. Therefore, it needs to
rank high on the search engine for keywords or increase footprint on the social network
platforms. These strategies can help the business organization to overcome the issues and
challenges faced by the FIAT.
3. Application of theory to practice
a) Evaluation of marketing mix for FIAT
Product: FIAT is the largest manufacturer of automobile based in Italy. FIAT produces
engines, vehicles and carriages as well as commercials vehicles like SUV’s and other auto
parts (Brodie et al. 2013). The product range of the company includes both luxury as well as
small scale cars.
Place: The Company has spread its product network in various countries and plans to increase
its global presence. As mentioned by Gilligan and Hird (2013), the business organization has
special ties with United States and has formed joint ventures in countries like France, Italy,
Russia and Turkey.
Price: Being in international business organization with global presence, the company offers
products with high quality based on premium price strategy. According to Baker (2014), the
company has been facing stiff competition in the market and it plans to compact the
competition with its strategic competitive pricing. It highly encourages value based pricing

5INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MANAGAMENT
policy. The effective pricing strategy of the company helps the business organization to
maintain its position into his global market.
Promotion: Currently the company has been focused on placing YouTube ads and analyzing
the viewers and customer response before placing the product in other Medias. This helps the
company to analyze the customer response before launching the product (Hennig-Thurau and
Hansen 2013).
b) Evaluation of three elements of consumer analysis
`The three elements of consumer analysis are described below:
a) Affect and cognition – According to Kotler et al. (2015), affect implies the product
positioning in the mind of the target customers. It is based on the positive or the
negative aspect about the company offerings in the mind of the consumers. Cognition
implies the though process of the consumers. FIAT can analyze the affect and
cognition of the consumers and take marketing decisions accordingly.
b) Consumer behaviour: There are various aspects which influences the behaviour of the
customers. By analyzing the consumer behaviour and identifying the actions of the
customers FIAT can increase the sales of the products and services (Westwood 2013).
c) Consumer environment: It is the external environmental factors such as place or
medium which influences the consumers to take action.
Conclusion and recommendations
Therefore, from the above analysis, it can be concluded that FIAT has undertaken
market initiative to place its products ads on YouTube and analyze the views of the target

6INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MANAGAMENT
audience; the company can place its products in other mediums. However, the report has
identifies the issues and challenges that can be faced due to the current marketing
strategies. It is recommended that FIAT can increase the visibility of the product offerings
on other social media platforms, SEO and analyze the footprints on the websites. Further,
it can analysis the consumer behaviour and the factors which influences the consumers to
take actions and take decisions accordingly.

7INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MANAGAMENT
References
Baker, M.J., 2014. Marketing strategy and management. Macmillan International Higher
Education.
Brodie, R.J., Ilic, A., Juric, B. and Hollebeek, L., 2013. Consumer engagement in a virtual
brand community: An exploratory analysis. Journal of business research, 66(1), pp.105-114.
Czinkota, M.R. and Ronkainen, I.A., 2013. International marketing. Cengage Learning.
Ford, I.D. and Leonidou, L.C., 2013. Research developments in international marketing. New
Perspectives on International Market-ing, edited by SJ Paliwoda, pp.3-32. Gilligan, C. and Hird,
M., 2013. International Marketing (RLE International Business): Strategy and Management. Routledge.
Gilligan, C. and Hird, M., 2013. International Marketing (RLE International Business):
Strategy and Management. Routledge.
Hennig-Thurau, T. and Hansen, U. eds., 2013. Relationship marketing: Gaining competitive
advantage through customer satisfaction and customer retention. Springer Science &
Business Media.
Kotler, P., Burton, S., Deans, K., Brown, L. and Armstrong, G., 2015. Marketing. Pearson
Higher Education AU.
Morschett, D., Schramm-Klein, H. and Zentes, J., 2015. Strategic international
management (pp. 978-3658078836). Springer.
Perreault, W.D., 2018. Essentials of marketing. New York: Mc Graw Hill.
Think with Google. (2016). FIAT's 500X Crossover Ad Drives Audience Engagement on
YouTube. [online] Available at:

8INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MANAGAMENT
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/content-marketing/fiats-500x-
crossover-ad-drives-audience-engagement-on-youtube/ [Accessed 30 Aug. 2019].
Westwood, J., 2013. How to write a marketing plan. Kogan Page Publishers.