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Attracting Younger Buyers Is Buick’s Greatest Challenge

 
14 3,231 views Dec 28, 2009
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Front Exterior View - 2010 Buick LaCrosse 4-door Sedan CX

Front Exterior View - 2010 Buick LaCrosse 4-door Sedan CX

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General Motors appointed a new chief for its Buick and GMC lines earlier this month in the form of Brian Sweeney, a former sales and marketing executive. Now in his second week in the job, 42-year-old Sweeney admits that improving the performance of Buick in particular will be his greatest challenge, with the key goal being to attract younger buyers to the brand.


While the average age of a new car buyer in the U.S. is 52, the average age of a Buick buyer is 70.

To reverse this trend, Sweeney is hoping to change the perception most new car buyers have of Buick.

Exciting new models like the European-engineered 2010 LaCrosse are already starting to show some results. For example, more than a third of buyers of the new LaCrosse are 55 or younger--up from less than 10% for the previous generation model. With the new 2011 Regal on its way, Sweeney would like to repeat this trend.

Other strategies include increasing the performance and dynamics of Buick vehicles, as well as adding more technology. Finally, Buick is also trialling new promotional techniques such as taking cars to coffee shops, art fairs and wine festivals in order to attract not only younger buyers, but new types of buyers as well.

[Automotive News, sub req’d]

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Comments (14)

  1. winter olympics Posted: 12/28/2009 6:48pm PST

    Now being in the car business and selling Honda and Toyota, i have to say this is quite a good looking car. I had a chance to get a close look at it at the Detroit show. I even talked one of the reps into letting me sit in it and it is very well put together.It to me, is one of Obama's best looking cars (GM's CEO) The interior is very Lexus and so is the out side, but we know Buick is hot on Lexus's tail. It will never meet the quality and service experience of a Lexus, but GM customers are used to being treated poorly.Hats off to Buick for producing something that dosn't look like a Chevy or Pontiac.
     
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  2. Second CTS Posted: 12/28/2009 9:08pm PST

    Re: Winter Olympics. There's damning with faint praise. And a smart-aleck remark about the federal loans. Someday a history will be written about Japan, Inc. and how Toyota, Honda and the rest have received decades worth of government assistance, including currency manipulation and hiding information about product defects (just now coming to light). In the meantime, the US industry is having to rebuild an eighty year old infrastructure and culture in one of the most competitive environments ever. Hats off to GM for hanging in there against all odds. And we'll see in five years if Honda is still independent.
     
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  3. fb_1508843818 avatar John Fox Posted: 12/29/2009 2:42am PST

    All I know is I'm 39 and I really like the looks of the new LaCrosse. I've always been partial to a 4 door sedan though.
     
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  4. Tony Posted: 12/29/2009 2:52am PST

    To attract a different demographic, design plays a very important part, if not THE most important one. How a car looks or comes across how it is perceived. I believe Buick is going the right way, and coming from outside North America, I believe it presents itself as being stylish and classy rather than geriatric and outdated. Now, the marketing department had better not drop the ball.
    Marketing departments are responsible for making superbly engineered cars like the Mazda MX-5 (Miata) a chick car, or give hatchbacks in America a cheap, downmarket image when there is nothing inexpensive at all about more glass, structural changes to accommodate a hatch, plus rear wipers. Let's see if they could turn Buick around with a lot of creative thinking.
     
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  5. lucifer Posted: 12/29/2009 5:47am PST

    This is going to take time but they are headed in the right direction ... just ask Hyundai how hard it is to change an image.
     
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  6. dan aka 64chevyman Posted: 12/29/2009 6:04am PST

    Great comment about the hatch just look at the Volvo and Focus hatches very Euro and very nice! Now what about that grill. Mercury is a great car sattled with "that grill", so make it look cooler on the smaller and hatch models!
     
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  7. GMontherise Posted: 12/29/2009 9:08am PST

    It won't meet the quality of a Lexus? I just sat in a top of the line Lexus LS and Lacrosse just the other day. The Lexus interior looks like a Camry's with wood trim. The Lacrosse blew it away in almost every aspect!
     
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  8. bepsf Posted: 12/29/2009 9:23am PST

    If Buick wants to attract younger clientelle - they need to take a page from Audi, Cadillac and BMW:
    1 - Offer attractive, desirable and well-made cars with quality interiors. Skip the stripped/base models with cloth seats and plastic hubcaps - Those are for Chevrolet.
    2 - Offer different & desirable bodystyles to bring single, dynamic, young folks in the door: ie, Coupes and Convertibles (Can you say Riviera?) as well as AWD Sportwagons and Estates. Don't bother with SUV's or Minivans: They say "Old", "Family", "Boring" as well as "GMC" and "Chevrolet".
    3 - Offer performance variants across the range of models: Audi has the S-models, BMW has M-Performance, Cadillac has the V-Series - Buick could easily have the GS-Series.
    4 - Bring a range-topping RWD sedan to the US market. There's already the Buick Park Avenue on the Chinese market - Bring it to the US!
     
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  9. james Posted: 12/29/2009 12:31pm PST

    i agree with you, bepsf, on almost all accounts except the comparisons between cadillac and buick. these two brands should not be competitive with one another. i'm still unsure where buick falls into GM's structure without getting in the way of the rising cadillac.
     
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  10. bepsf Posted: 12/29/2009 3:41pm PST

    james--
    I get what you're saying about drawing the line between Buick and Cadillac - You certainly don't want them to compete with one another when they should be looking outside of GM for their competition (Too long a fault of the multiple GM divisions)- but I think it's fairly simple to do with just a bit of discipline on the part of GM.
    Buick merely has to be an entry-luxury contender w/ some performance models and hybrids (Electra?) tossed in - Nothing less than $27K and nothing more than $50K.
    This gives Chevrolet plenty of space to function for their entry-level carlines - nothing more than $35K with the exception of Volt (which really should have been a Cadillac or Buick since it's gonna be $40K) Corvette and perhaps some SS versions of a Malibu or Impala - and of course their larger SUV/CUV's.
    GMC could fill in with the SUV/CUV/Trucks in the Buick pricerange...
    ...and Cadillac would offer the cutting-edge technologies, avant-garde styling, longer wheelbases, hand-made finishes and semi-custom detailing (greater choices of premium paints, leathers and real wood trims, for example) for the premium price bracket beginning at $40K for a CTS and upwards to $100K for a true S-Class/7-Series/A8 competitor.
     
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  11. el34 Posted: 12/29/2009 9:16pm PST

    I saw the LaCrosse for the first time today. It's gonna get old real fast and in less than 2 years a brand new Lexus ES will be in the showrooms. This Buick comes with a 4 banger. Why did Buick skimp on the wood trim. How does the upgraded stereo compare to the Mark Levinson? BTW, this Buick is built by the UAW and I don't support the UAW.
     
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  12. james Posted: 12/29/2009 10:07pm PST

    bepsf - seems like a good plan to me. now all it should take would be a bit of discipline as you said. one can only hope that GM's got the stones
     
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  13. MoMo Posted: 12/31/2009 11:57am PST

    They seem to have finally figured out that there is a difference between image problems and design problems. Let's hope we see some more progressive new car designs out of this instead of their same old tired look.
     
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  14. Joe Lo Posted: 1/4/2010 6:54pm PST

    Bankruptcy hasn't changed the disfunctional mindset of GM one bit. They just killed off a brand that appealed to a younger buyer (Saturn) and now want to turn a sigmatized brand into a product line for "younger buyers." Does anyone else see the absurdity in this thinking?
    Couldn't they just dump this zombie-brand carline and put some meaningful resources into a brand that already appeals to a younger buyer and is many of the things they're now trying to do with Buick?
    Buick is a zombie brand. It has forever lost is appeal to stir emotion in anyone under the age of 55 and nothing short of a Grand National would ever bring it back.
    In 15 years the Government will again be bailing out GM and people will start calling the company "American Peugeot."
     
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