3. INTRODUCTION
▣ Edsel is an automobile marque that was planned,
developed, and manufactured by the Ford Motor
Company for model years 1958 through 1960. And
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▣ Ford invested heavily in a yearlong teaser campaign
leading consumers to believe that Edsels were the cars
of the future – an expectation they failed to meet.
After being unveiled to the public, they were
considered to be unattractive, overpriced, and
overhyped.
The very name "Edsel" became a popular symbol for a
commercial failure.
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4. ▣ Back in 1956, Ford Motor Company realised that there
was a void in their selections of mid-size
automobiles—Customers who upgrade from Lower
end of the market to Medium end of the market.
▣ In the medium segment, Ford had only “Mercury”
brand, whereas GM and Plymouth had brands like
Buick, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, etc.
▣ The perception was that Ford was losing customers to
other manufacturers when the time came to trade-up
from the lower end segment.
▣ By looking at competitors rather than customers, Ford
wanted to create a brand in “Medium Segment”.
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5. Following were the objectives for FORD management
team during launch of EDSEL
▣ To ensure greater retention of ford upgraders
▣ The beginning of end if they started thinking on
preserving old customers than attracting next
generation customers. To keep more customers in ford
family
▣ To add More dealers to Ford Family so that they could
sell more ford cars
▣ Aim was just not to sell more Edsel cars but should
help sell more ford cars by “Halo Effect”
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8. ▣ Ford’s teasers with tagline “Car of the Future” created
a huge hype, increased consumer’s unrealistic
expectations. But when they launched, people could
not find a huge difference in value propositions from
other brands. Yes, there were a couple of notable
innovations from Ford’s perspective—but consumers did
not consider them as highly valuable.
▣ Ford management team used entirely internal
measures for success/progress of the project—
example, Technical Achievements like Teletouch,
floating speedometer, Self-adjusting brakes,
transmission lock, electronic hood release.—They
should have used external, customer-centric measures
for success of a feature.
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10. ▣ Ford motor company did not see the shift in the
cultural movement of consumers—People were
looking for smaller cars.
▣ Consumers were also moving towards Cheaper models
and fuel efficient cars- Ford missed this point
completely and Edsel was a “fuel guzzler”.
▣ Ford started Styling of Edsel in 1955, the year in which
two million units of “Medium Sized” car were sold.
Ford used this sales data to justify the design
investment and blindly followed the trend. If Ford had
launched this car in 1955, the brand would not have
failed. By 1957, market and consumer attitudes had
changed.
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12. ▣ Ford's designers and marketers began development on
the car in 1955, with the intent of creating an
automobile tailored to the desires of the American
people, as determined through seemingly endless
polling.
▣ Despite endless hours of testing and consultation, the
chairman of the board decided at the last minute that
he was going to go with Edsel, the name of Henry
Ford's son.
▣ The people hence didn’t have an emotional connect to
the Car and also felt that their opinions were
disregarded.
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14. ▣ In the late '50s, American consumers had a limited choice of
car models, and there weren't tremendous differences in
performance from model to model.
▣ In a lazy attempt to please everybody, they made the terrible
decision to debut 18 variations of the car at launch.
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17. A product’s success lies in “Prototyping” and “testing”.
Whatever assumptions, ideas, insights we have got could be
validated by some form of prototyping and testing with a small
set of actual users. A prototype could be an inexpensive model,
scaled down version, to help real customers to understand the
design or solution. Testing with real users helps us to optimise
the design, remove low-value proposition features, enhance
good value propositions and get what customers think and feel
about the product.
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18. ▣ Ford did not “Test Market” any prototypes with potential
“Real Buyers” until vehicles had been fully designed, new
dealers were established. Prototype testing would have
solved some of the problems associated with “Value
Propositions”.
▣ When consumers were looking for cheaper models, Ford’s
first launch was most expensive, top of the line models. The
rule is to start with cheaper models to encourage people to
buy. Prototype testing would have guided them.
▣ Every brand launched new cars in the month of November.
When Edsel was launched in September, it was competing
with 1957 models with discounted price before next year
models pushed into the showroom.
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19. CONCLUSION
▣ Ford learnt a lot from “Edsel’s Failure” and they turned
“Customer Centric”. It was one of the reasons for their
“Mustang” success. One of the main reasons for Edsel’s
failure was unprecedented “Pre-Publicity”—Self-assured
advertising—creating unrealistic expectations. Pre-
publicity was the first step for failure—So, Ford Edsel was
destined for failure before anyone saw the car.
▣
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