For years, Ferrari has been known as the manufacturer of expensive luxury automobiles. The company plans to attract the major segment of the car-buying market who purchase medium-priced automobiles. As Ferrari considers this trading-down strategy.

Required:
a. What branding strategy would you recommend?
b. What are the trade-offs to consider with your strategy?
c. In your opinion, should Ferrari pursue this trading-down strategy?

The branding strategy they should opt is a multi-branding strategy, in which a company's objective is to market more than one product and/or brand under the same hood in order to increase their overall market share. This strategy is somewhat used by other known car manufacturers such as Toyota (Lexus), Honda (Acura) etc.

b) Branding strategy trade-offs

The trade-off with this strategy is that the attention of Ferrari would be diverted from their main market segment and therefore, they will not be providing new products to the luxury market.

This will give the other companies in the same market segment the opportunity to increase their market share in the same segment.

c) Opinion on the trading-down strategy

It is fairly a risk for Ferrari to opt for the trading down strategy. This is due to the fact that their main market and objective is the luxury market to buy their expensive cars. Focusing on the new strategy could hurt their brand equity and this may impact their loyal buyers.

However, such could be avoided if they market this strategy with a foreign brand name and promote the name under the Ferrari hood by saying that the foreign brand has been designed by the Ferrari. Keeping the original Ferrari name and objective separate from this brand.