Ford: No Change in Incentive Strategy
February 01, 2008

Despite press reports saying Ford is increasing incentives, the automaker is sticking with its plan to keep vehicle production in line with demand to avoid costly incentives, said Jim Farley, Ford’s head of global sales and marketing.

Farley, who came on board only late last year from Toyota, acknowledged in a conference call with analysts and reporters Friday that Ford is deploying incentives in a different way now than it did a year ago. Ford has decentralized, he said, allowing regions flexibility to offer incentives when they want and on what vehicles they choose.

“Incentives in certain regions, on certain vehicles and in certain months will accelerate or decelerate as we work with dealers,” Farley said.

For instance, Ford put incentives on its long-neglected Ranger compact pickup, which resulted in a sales increase of 19.2 percent.

Asked when the last time Ranger had a sales increase, George Pipas, Ford’s head of sales analysis, quipped: “Let’s see, what year did I join Ford?!” (That was 1976; he couldn’t say the last time Ranger showed a sales increase.)

Ford also offered targeted incentives in the Southwest region of the U.S.

Farley insisted Ford was one of only two manufacturers that had lower incentive spending than January last year. “Ford was sharply lower,” he said.

Edmunds.com’s estimates of Total Cost of Incentives for January shows the average incentive on a Ford vehicles was $3,096, down from $3,300 in January 2007.

Posted by Michelle Krebs at 11:37 AM under Business , Ford | Comments (2) | digg this | Seed Newsvine