Marketing mix. Product

Objective

Enable citizens who have driving license to have an access to a fleet of shared  in small parking lots and parking places around a city for the necessary period of time and to promote car sharing as an integral part of urban transformation.

It is proposed to implement fleet of the following cars:

Hyundai Solaris Hatchback	Nissan Almera
Ford Focus Ambiente	Opel Corsa

Concept of usage

In order to become a customer there are several simple steps:

1. Make the contract online or in office
2. Provide bank card information (for violation cases)
3. present a passport and the driving license (with 1 year experience)
4. obtain a plastic membership card- key in the office or at home by delivery.

• 24 hours availability
• Flexible Rental Timing
• Flexible Pick up/ Return locations
• Petrol included
• Basic insurance covered
• No booking fees
• No peak hour surcharge
• Conformation upon booking

Vehicle placement concentration

• Airports and entertainment areas
• Housing estates
• Shopping malls/ Furniture Malls
• Event areas (like expo)

The following video shows the usage process:

The value of the core product is consistent with the needs of the target market and established by its new idea on the Russian Market,  superior use of touch screens, tracking telematics, and mobile applications.

Service Strategy

The website and ZipCar application provide up-to-date information on rates, user guidelines, and vehicle locations that save the consumer’s time. Registration is designed for simplicity, security, and speed for maximum ease of use.

 

Brand Strategy

“ZipCar” implies quick service that will get you wherever you want to go, acknowledging the target market’s need for instant gratification. In order to make people more aware about the brand, it is necessary to build a promotion plan.

 

 

Macro-level analysis of car-sharing industry in Russia

In order to assess the potential of car-sharing implementation in Russia we need to make a PESTEL analysis.

Political factors

–Governmental plans
There is a plan of traffic jams reduction by 2016. By 2016, the authorities intend to increase the average speed by 17% through a variety of measures (source – Financial Times).

–Taxes and duties
Russian government has introduced higher vehicle tax rates depending on the engine power and proposed to rduce this tax for electric cars. The import duty on eco-cars was removed.

–Subsidies
Regional subsidies for ecological projects.

Economic factors

There is a real income growth by 2.5%. Growth of real wages accelerated in February to 6% compared with 5.2% in January 2014, for the first two months, an increase of 5.6%. The unemployment rate remains approximately the same (5.4%).

Gasoline prices started to increase more for the recent time.

Annual increase of gas price

Social factors

–Environment
There are several ecological societies with successful propaganda of emission reduction (people start to care more about ecology).

–Car Usage Culture
According to Russian Public Opinion Research Center, 42% of Russian citizens drive a car. And this indicator continues to grow  by about 2-3% per year. However, in big cities, such as Moscow or St. Petersburg 44% don’t drive to work due to trafiic jams.  Moreover, there is still a trend among the population to drive their own car.

Technological factors

Growth of internet expansion

Allocation of IPv4 Address Space

Using the internet and social networking sites such as Facebook, Vkontakte are the hottest trends of
this decade.

– Progress of applications development

There is a significant increase of using mobile devices, such as iPhone and Android or Windows-based one. Thus, people have become to use different applications almost everyday, especially booking for plane, train or cinema tickets, hotel room etc.

– Infrastructure
Lack of parking places in major cities, which is a serious problem as well as traffic jams in big cities.

Environmental factors

There is a huge amount of emissions, which causes air pollution and bad ecological situations, especially in big cities. The following graph shows us that passenger vehicle emissions comprise two-thirds of that total. What is
more, vehicle emissions are one of the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

Sources of Emissions

 

Legal factors

There are environmental regulations – special standards for emissions and gas quality, governmental plans to cut the emissions. Moreover, every vehicle should have an obligatory regular technical examination.

In addition, there is a problem of bureacracy for doing such a business in Russia.

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To sum up the most important factors, which causes an opportunity for car sharing implementation in the Russian market are political, legal and environmental factors, which encourage eco-projects and technological development which helps to deal with customers easier. However, there are also obstacles, such as already existing lack of parking places and high importance of car ownership for people.

The Idea of Carsharing

What is car-sharing?

Short-term car rental or car-sharing – a kind of rental car with a per-minute or hourly operation.

It is used for short trips around the city and efficient when there is the significant amount of automated car rental service in the city, as it is assumed to return the car at any of the service points. Car-sharing is sometimes used in conjunction with the carpooling ( joint trips with «the same-way» travelers) .

Users of short term rental services, instead of owning a car, have an access to the network of rental stations and freedom of choice between two alternatives: public transport or car in each case. They also can avoid the costs of owning a vehicle in their personal property.

As of December 2012, there were an estimated 1.7 million car-sharing members in 27 countries, including so-called peer-to-peer services, according to the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at U.C. Berkeley.

So, let’s compare car-sharing with ordinary car rent service to see the obvious advantages of car-sharing.

As we can see, car sharing is more comfortable to use, especially for short trips.