Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

MARKET DYNAMICS IN THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY 123
impact on the urban lifestyle and environment in several ways.
For one thing, they tend to drive less. After joining Zipcar,
90 percent of members reduced their driving by over fi ve thousand
miles on average. Perhaps as important, older vehicles on
the road are replaced with new cars that are less polluting, and
people tend to drive smaller cars. The result is a visible way to
express a personal concern for the environment.
The Zipcar vision, articulated by Scott Griffi th who became
CEO shortly after the fi rm started and required fi nancing, is to
be a global lifestyle brand. 16 Rather than being about renting
cars, they ’ re about urban life and the freedom of not owning and
maintaining a car but still having access to one. In that spirit it
provides a way to cope with urban living in a fun, upbeat, and
environmentally sensitive way. Zipcar aspired to be a lifestyle
brand. The Zipcar Low - Car Diet, a very on - brand promotion
that gets people to blog about giving up their cars, fi ts the lifestyle.
For the promotion, one bike brand partner gives away a
bike in each city.
Zipcar was the world ’ s leading car - sharing service in 2010,
with over 350,000 members and 6,500 vehicles in urban areas and
on college campuses throughout twenty - eight North American
states and provinces as well as in London. Offering more that
thirty makes and models, including electric vehicles, it is in the
process of changing the automobile industry. Its ability to become
the market leader is in part due to a strategy of buying smaller
operations to establish its local or regional presence. One estimate
placed the 2009 market at $ 150 to 250 million with a potential of
growing to $ 3.3 billion in 2016. 17
The rental car companies ’ response is to provide more fl exible
rental arrangements, including renting by the hour instead
of by the day, and to enter as direct competitors in niche markets
such as college and company campuses. But Zipcar has
created a process technology, an infrastructure, and a lifestyle
personality that represent signifi cant barriers to others. They are
the authentic car - sharing brand.