Industry of operation and product portfolio analysis
Key product lines in terms of market share/profits
Mercedes Benz is a leader in the automotive industry and has a strong industry presence, especially in the UAE markets. The Market share of a product plays a vital part in a product portfolio scheduling model. Mercedes Benz is the first European car manufacturer to introduce cars in the UAE market and the response generated through sales has been of high significance. Mercedes Benz has a fair product portfolio. It has passenger cars, vans, and trucks. Passenger cars have the key market share in the UAE Automotive market. The new White Gold Car launched by Mercedes provides a chic look with all the luxurious comforts. During the year as a whole, Mercedes-Benz delivered ,02,300 vehicles to customers worldwide (2008: ,2,700 minus 9.7%) and, in many cases, performed better than the total market in many countries including the U.S., China, Canada, Russia, the UK, South Korea, and Brazil (Reese 200).
The product life cycle of Mercedes
A life cycle of a product is divided into 4 stages;
the introductory, the expansion, the maturity, and the decline stages. The life cycle of Mercedes Benz is amazing because it started in 886 and has been in great progress to date with the introduction of more innovative products on a timely basis. Mercedes Benz has hybrid sedans, luxury cars, sports vehicles, etc. The luxury cars are in the category of S class, SLK class, E class, C class, CLK class, etc. the E class model fits into the budget of an executive car buyer. The latest launch in UAE has been the new E class model Cabriolet which has an advanced light system and other comforts like detection of drowsiness and the W22 model E-Class cars. So the model E-class is still in the introduction stage. In the growth, the stage is the C-class, S-class, and 600 series. Mercedes has been launching both introductory products as well as are bringing out various variants of the cars according to the products demand. There is no specific life span that Mercedes offers for its products. When a product is in the growth or declining stage then Mercedes prefers to withdraw it from the market.