Mazda: No Change in Incentives
April 07, 2008
Mazda plans to keep incentives in the U.S. unchanged even though sales fell more than the
overall market last month and some competitors are upping the incentive ante, Bloomberg News reported Monday.
“We will continue to try and manage it as best as we can, not to increase it just to chase volume,'' Daniel Morris, the company's head of marketing, told Bloomberg in an interview last Friday.
Mazda's U.S. sales dropped 12.8 percent in March as demand for the RX-8 sports car, which is replaced with a new version for the 2008 model year, plunged by 55 percent and sales for the four-year-old Mazda3 compact, one of last year’s hottest models, dropped 19 percent. Mazda's average U.S. incentives were $2,100 in 2007, Morris said. The industry's average U.S. incentive in February was $2,435, according to Edmunds.com.
“Keeping incentives at the current level is a risky strategy,'' Hirofumi Yokoi, an analyst at CSM Worldwide, an auto consulting company with offices in Tokyo, told Bloomberg. ``They may lose sales to carmakers who are willing to cut prices.''
Raising incentives would cut into Mazda's operating profit margins, which lag behind Toyota, Honda and Nissan Motor Co. Mazda's operating profit margin in the quarter ended December was 4.2 percent compared with Toyota and Honda's 9 percent, Bloomberg reported.
Photos by Mazda
1- Mazda3
2- Mazda RX8
Posted by Michelle Krebs at 7:01 AM under Companies , News | Comments (1) | digg this | Seed Newsvine
Mazda is a bad spot with the exchange rates. I don't think they can afford as many incentives because all of their cars are imported.
My brother just bought a Mazda3. It's a great car. However, their sporty engines (2.3 liter) are much larger than Honda's. It makes for a responsive car, but it can get 10 MPG LESS! than a Honda Civic. Ouch.
Posted by: Double Wishbone | April 07, 2008 at 4:22 PM