KIA motors case study

Answer 1:
Behind any successful marketing campaign or any sort of marketing strategy, there
has to be a major role of marketing mix with which the company will go ahead or
they operate their marketing strategy based on objectives (Goboundless, 2013). When
it comes to marketing mix, four simple elements come into consideration. These are
Product, price, place and promotion (CIM, 2013). These plays a vital role in any
marketing plans according to objectives and based on these key elements, the
marketing executives will focus on if they want to set they want to set their mission
and vision of the company. Same thing happened to KIA as well. According to the
case study, KIA motors wants to enter in the European market, as they want to
dominate the UK motor industry (Introduction-1st Phrase, KIA Motors Case Study).
Based on the market research from the case, it can be proved that at that particular
time, in the UK market, several other established brands are set and holding their
identity in the UK market and it was very hard for KIA to set their core competencies.
As their (KIA) aim is to overcome the situational problem that they face while
entering in the European market and for better growth rate in the market, they have
set the marketing mix accordingly to their plans and objectives (Introduction-2nd
phrase; KIA Motors Case Study).
While Kia motors set their marketing mix, they did some market research on the
existing market where they wanted to operate, the needs and wants of the customers,
what their actual taster, which target audience they are focusing on etc. and other
tailoring their products and services according to the needs and wants of the existing
and potential customers (Developing Brand Identity; KIA Motors Case Study). This
marketing mix started with the planning from the top management and they set forth
some aims to operate, as they want to operate as the major player in the UK car
market. For this, they did market research to identify the needs; they set forth their
business process, as they want to bring something new, something fun and dynamic
approach to the UK market. They forecasted their marketing strategies considering
the objectives with a focus on increasing brand awareness by providing and delivering
the customers with great quality and great design cars with an affordable and
competitive price (Marketing; KIA Motors Case Study).
After the planning and setting up the strategies to increase the brand awareness of
KIA motors, they set their mission and vision and in regards to mission and vision,
they set their grounds of marketing mix which tells us about the right product offered
at the right price, which can be easily available with the most suitable promotions
(The Marketing Mix, KIA Motors Case Study).
The main marketing mixes of KIA based on four factors. These includes:

Product: KIA is providing cars with good quality and with good design
alongside with after sales services to the customers and potential customers.
They have also got some unique selling point, which creates the core
competencies of the brand that is the 7-year warranty of cars and repairing
services. While choosing for product in the marketing mix, general factors are
met by the manufacturers or any particular brand but the brand has to promote
something distinctive so that they can maintain their core competencies in the
eyes of the customers by which the customers can only recall the brand based
on those competitive advantages and can differentiate the brand on the
grounds of competitiveness and here the 7 year warranty of cars is the
competitive advantage of KIA motors which can also be termed as USP
(Unique Selling Point) (The Marketing Mix for KIA; KIA Motors Case
Study).

Price: KIA motors not only providing great quality cars to its customers, but
they also providing them with cheaper and competitive rates than any other
motor company. It is another USP of KIA motors and the competitive price is
providing another advantage over competitors (The Marketing Mix for KIA;
KIA Motors Case Study).

Place: KIA motors has already set 166 dealership stores in the UK market and
they have already started to expand their numbers of outlets. As they try to set
their marketing strategies based on the aim that they want to be the giant
leader in the motor car industry, so they have already set up large and small
stores in the European market and it can prove that they are setting up their
visions very strongly (The Marketing Mix for KIA; KIA Motors Case Study).

Promotions: As the European market is very much hard to enter and if they
enter somehow into the market, then they may not survive in the long run until
or unless they come up with something unique and distinctive in the eyes of
the customers and survive in the market. KIA motors very smartly planned
their marketing strategies by setting forth their promotional campaigns by
doing sports marketing and by sponsoring sports like cricket, football, tennis
etc. By their promotional campaigns, they tried to enlighten the fun approach
of the brand. They also tried to maintain a good PR (public relations) with the
European audience and associating with the high profile sporting events that
can develop the brand awareness and brand recognition to the highest extend.
Besides these activities, they did above the line and below the line promotions,
which represents promoting to the mass market, and the latter one represents
the specific market respectively. Most importantly, by sponsoring in the social
media and other online media, they keep promoting themselves that they are
supposed to be the one to whom the customers in the UK market can really
trust and there are other several environmental issues that was considered as

promotions along with CSR (corporate Social Responsibility) activities (The

Marketing Mix for KIA; KIA Motors Case Study).
With the help of these marketing mix plan, KIA motors tried to build up their brand
awareness in the European market and they also wanted to create customer
engagement so that the existing and potential customers end up buying motor cars
from KIA and enjoy the after sales service.

Answer 2:
When KIA motors started their promotional campaigns, from the very beginning they
have started doing promotional campaigns based on sponsorship events. They
undertook several advertising tools as well apart from sponsorship, but the most
important part was the sponsorship events as they sponsored sporting events like
cricket, football and tennis (Promotion; KIA Case Study).
When KIA started their promotional campaigns, they used to have several criterions
to fulfill. They wanted to increase the brand awareness by offering different range and
varieties of product offerings, they also wanted to increase the brand recognition as
they wanted to compete with 30 major players in the UK; they also wanted to increase
the demand of their cars and for that reason they set up 166 (dealership) stores and
other outlets in Europe. They also wanted to leverage the fun approach to their brand
and at the end they position their cars as of great quality and design in a competitive
price. So keeping these factors in mind, KIA motors started their promotional
activities and first thing they did was the sponsoring sporting events (Promotion; KIA
Case Study).
To meet the criterions of the promotional campaigns, they first started with the
sponsoring of the sporting events. According to the case, the general term sponsorship
is basically based on the association linked with other company where the sponsored
company gets paid up by the offeree and it can be any sort of organization, event or
television sponsorship. With the help of sport marketing via sponsoring sporting
events, KIA gets to link with a large audience and they can create positive
associations. It helps KIA to be linked with superior value in another field.
Considering the example of KIA motors, in 2002, they sponsored the FIFA World
Cup in Korea and Japan and from then onwards, they gets the contract of sponsoring
FIFA World Cup until 2022. With the help of sport marketing, KIA now gets to link
its brand awareness and associations with FIFA or it can be said in another way, now
KIA can leverage the brand associations of FIFA by sponsoring them and its activities
with well-attended and well-published football matches that has been enjoyed by
larger group of audience/people (Sports Marketing; KIA Motors Case Study).
There are several other important factors that helped KIA a lot when they sponsored
with the sporting events. First of all, it can be known that any sort of sports like

Cricket, Football or even Tennis are enjoyed by millions of people in the UK and this
was the chance KIA took. They sponsored with these major sporting events and after
that it (sponsorship) helped them to develop good public relations (PR) with European
audience and also it helped to build positive perception of the brand. As a large pool
of employees watch these events, then they get to know KIA as sponsors and it helped
KIA to engage with potential customers who now sees them (KIA) in a positive way.
As in the European market, KIA motors lacks awareness and recognition, so the
sponsorship technique helped KIA to deal with the brand awareness and creates a
unique image in the minds of the customers (existing as well as potential). By
leveraging themselves with exciting and interesting games, KIA tried to show that
they (KIA) are also exciting and interesting (KIA Sponsorship-Sports Marketing; KIA
Motors Case Study).
There are many sporting events in the UK and amongst them Cricket, Football and
Tennis are the major events that the audience must watch almost all the time. In case
of Cricket, they have created a 5-year partnership with Surrey County Cricket Club
including extensive branding like shirt sponsorship and naming rights for the historic
KIA Oval Cricket ground. Kia became the official sponsor of FIFA World Cup when
they started their journey in 2002 in Korea Japan and they expanded until 2022. KIA
also sponsors Australian Open for 10 years and Rafael Nadal is KIAs global
ambassador (KIA Sponsorship-Sports Marketing; KIA Motors Case Study).
There are other several factors that sponsorship helped KIA to raise its profile
amongst the key target markets. They have combined sponsorship and social media to
support their promotional activities and to gain the below line workers. This will help
to create the relationship with customers through online. There are other social
mediums like Facebook, YouTube subscription channels by which KIA started to
increase the awareness amongst the potential customers. Several other things like
CRM activities etc. helped them a lot interact with the customers and to create a
positive image in the minds of the customers. They started doing something good for
the customers and spreads the news virally in the internet so that it goes from one
person to another (Viral Marketing) and at the end creates positive word of mouth to
the customers as well. KIA also supported environmental issues to attract the below
line customers who are case sensitive in regards to CSR activities as well as public
relations/relations. They have matched their positioning and brand associations
together to create something new in the eyes of the potential customers so that the
customers buy KIA motorcars and can compete with the other well-established car
companies in Europe (Above the line and below the line promotions; KIA Motors
Case Study).
So thus the exact way, KIA showed that throughout the promotional activities, they
proved that they became the major players in the UK as they are associated with the
high profile sporting events.

Answer 3:
There are other promotional tactics that can be considered and strategies that can help
to increase the awareness for KIA motors. These are especially sales promotion,
public relations, personal marketing, direct marketing, online marketing etc. and these
plays a vital role in contributing the total outcome of the vision. As the beginning of
the advertisement tools are considered to be the most useful for KIA but there are
others as well without which the promotional tools wouldnt work well such as above
the line and below the line promotions (Above the line and below the line promotions;
KIA Motors Case Study). These types of promotions depend on the number or pool of
audience or customer groups. When it comes to above the line customers, then KIA
targeted the large pool of customers and they chose to select other advertisement
mediums. Above-the-line promotions use mass media. This type of promotion focuses
on advertising to a large audience. It includes print, online media, television and
cinema advertising. Kias above-the- line activities include adverts in the press. They
also produce online banner advertisements, place advertisements on billboards and
use their website to meet the needs of their consumers. Recent TV advertising
campaigns have included the small yet mighty cat for the new Picanto and the
future proof Kia cee'd, emphasising the 7 year warranty. It is difficult to tailor a
promotion to a specific group of consumers through above-the-line promotions. This
is because a mass audience with different tastes and needs views it. Above-the-line
promotion is also very expensive (Above the line and below the line promotions; KIA
Motors Case Study).
Below-the-line methods are very specific, memorable activities focused on targeted
groups of consumers. They are under the control of the organization. Kia uses these
techniques to target clearly defined consumer groups. Below-the-line methods include
sponsorship, sales promotions, public relations, personal selling and direct marketing.
Sponsorships have helped to raise Kias profile amongst key target markets. Kia has
also developed its relationships with consumers through public relations. Traditional
press releases work alongside newer forms of marketing. For example, Kia uses
digital and social media as an integral part of its below-the-line activity (Above the
line and below the line promotions; KIA Motors Case Study).

Answer 4:
Except the AIDA model, there are other communication mix approaches like
MARCOM mix (2013) where all other marketing mix strategies are being met and
these strategies are quiet concludes all other promotional tools around the marketing
factors. There are other factors to increase the brand awareness and these are CBBE
(Customer Based Brand Equity model) (CBBE, 2011) where most of the marketing
and branding tools can be followed and based on these tools, KIA motors can develop
their strategies and tailor their needs as well as manage their competencies.

Figure: Marketing Communication Mix (Marcom, 2013)

MARCOM mix strategies comes into considerations when any company wants to
promote their products and service offerings into the market and the MARCOM mix
strategy is one of the most effective strategies for a successful brand (Marcom Mix,
2013). As based on the case, KIA motors planned their strategies according to AIDA
model and they have set their promotional mix strategies based on the AIDA model,
But except AIDA model, if they want to imply MARCOM mix model, then all other
or if you go deeper, then you can say that you can analyze the marketing
communication mix very effectively. In the MARCOM mix strategy, all the
promotional tools like advertising, sales promotions, direct marketing, personal
selling, public relations comes into considerations. As for the record, considering the
example of the case, KIA motors did their promotions quiet effectively and they
undertook several promotional strategies that is linked with the MARCOM strategy
for example they did public relations activities as well as they build up effective CSR
activities so that they can build good relations with the British clients and can enhance
their brand awareness along with brand image. They also did sponsorships like for
example sponsoring events that is linked with sporting events like Cricket, Tennis and
specially football and with this sponsorship, they have entered successfully in the
European Market (Marcom Mix, 2013).
But now if they focus more on other marketing communication tools for example
advertisement, sales promotions, direct marketing, personal selling, then they can also
keep and hold a good position in the European market as well; now many questions
may arise for example why it will happen? The simple answer is, if any company
wants to enter into a big industry for example car industry in the European market
specially in the UK market, then they have to put more and more focus on the
communications, letting people be aware of the company, understanding their needs,

informing them that you (the company) have what they want and giving them what
they want and this scenario can only be successful if an effective communication mix
can be undertaken properly and the MARCOM mix has got all the necessary elements
for preparing and planning the promotional strategies more effectively (Marcom Mix,
2013).

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(2013).
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Introduction-1st phrase; KIA Motors Case Study. Last Accessed Date: March 2, 2013.
Introduction-2nd phrase; KIA Motors Case Study. Last Accessed Date: March 2,
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The Marketing Mix for KIA; KIA Motors Case Study. Last Accessed Date: March 2,
2013.
Promotion; KIA Case Study. Last Accessed Date: March 2, 2013.
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KIA Sponsorship-Sports Marketing; KIA Motors Case Study. Last Accessed Date:
March 2, 2013.
KIA Sponsorship-Sports Marketing; KIA Motors Case Study. Last Accessed Date:
March 2, 2013.

Above the line and below the line promotions; KIA Motors Case Study. Last
Accessed Date: March 2, 2013.
CBBE (2011). Brand Relationship and Brand Loyalty. Available:
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Last
Accessed Date: March 2, 2013.
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Last Accessed Date: March 2, 2013.