Goodyear’s Aquatred Tire
Introduction
This case study tends to look into Goodyear’s past and future achievements, particularly directing the attention to one of the best products innovated by Goodyear: the award winning, Aquatred tire. Furthermore this case study makes a great attempt to analyze the relationship between business research, decision making process, and organization’s effectiveness.
1. A swift look into Goodyear’s history
The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company is a worldwide leader in the production of tires, engineered products and other goods, with over one hundred years of history. The Goodyear is one of the giant corporations that has long recognized the importance of forecasting customer demand as a part of its production and distribution planning, and the need for meeting the customer's requirements with the right product in the right place at the right time, every time.
Goodyear (a tire and rubber company) was founded in 1898 in Akron Ohio by Frank and Charles Seiberling and was named after Charles Goodyear (inventor of the vulcanization process, 1939).In 1910 Goodyear became an international organization and expanded into Canada, Argentina, Australia, etcetera, and ten years after (in 1926) emerged to become the world’s largest rubber company (Hoovers a D&B company, 2010).
The year 1990 was one of the most critical years for Goodyear Company since the Depression, because this was its first money-losing year, but several years later Goodyear makes a superior comeback, considerably increasing its presence in the US retail market. Another dreadful period for Goodyear was between 2008-2009 when Goodyear lost $375 million and experienced a 16% decrease in sale and plans to reduce its global tire production capacity by 15 to 25 million tires a year by 2011. Despite the recent losses Goodyear continues to be one of the most innovative leaders in the tire industry worldwide proficiently competing with companies such as Bridgestone, Continental AG, Michelin, Midas, and etcetera (Hoovers a D&B company, 2010).
2. Aquatred-Goodyear Tire
It is well known that wet road conditions contribute to more than 1 million automobile accidents each year. With the indentation to assist ease this condition, Goodyear's family of Aquatred-branded tires features deep, wide grooves and aggressive tread patterns designed to keep the tires in contact with the road even in deep water at high speeds, promising increased safety on wet roads. Aquatred tire was innovated in late 1991and was result of a long, cautious, effective research. Its success was so amazing, that within the first year Aqutraid’s launch, a total of 1million units were sold (Demere, 1996).
Today, the Aquatred family tire has expended and includes
1-The Original Aquatred tire (1991)
2-The Eagle Aquatredtire (1993)
3-The Wrangler Aquatred (1995)
4- The Aquatred II (Demere, 1996).
Aquatred family tire is best known for:
a) Long tread life
b) All season capability for performance – oriented cars
c) Deep-water capacity for performance – oriented cars
d) Safety features (Demere, 1996).
Compared to its competitors, the Aquatred family's advantages lie in braking and accelerating in deep water at high speeds; the edge lessens as the water level and/or speed drop, or as cornering is injected into the equation (Demere, 1996).
3. How did the research process impact the innovation progression of Aqutred tire?
Aqutrad became the best product in good year history not by accident. The Succes of Aqutred is a credited to several marketing researches conducted from the moment the concept of Aquatred was born to its launch stage. The first research conducted by the Goodyear’s marketing department discovered the existence of a significant threat: “Consumers felt the tire is just a tire and did not perceive any brand to be significant different from the other” (Cooper & Schindler, 2008, video).
Another competitive analysis conducted simultaneously with the first research, established that Goodyear’s major competitors were focusing in high mileage strategy. The research findings facilitate Goodyear in the decision making process. Therefore Goodyear decided to develop a new innovative tire aimed at wet-traction market segment” (Cooper & Schindler, 2008, video).
It is obvious that Goodyear’s position on the “Hierarchy of information-Based Decision Makers pyramid” is “Top Tire “. Being a “Visionary”, Goodyear launched a third quantitative and qualitative marketing research (Cooper & Schindler, 2008, p. 11).
The purpose of the third research was to identify:
* What the consumer wants
* What the consumer fears
* What the consumer needs
* Consumer’s driving habits
* Consumer’s purchase behavior (Cooper & Schindler, 2008, video).
Some of the techniques utilized during the research process included:
a) Focus group, b) One on one interview, c) Nationwide consumer survey
4. Conclusion
Business researches are a vital to the decision making process, not just for assisting managers to select better strategies and tactics but also for their significant contribution on enhancing return on investment (ROI) (Cooper & Schindler, 2008, p. 5). Aquatred‘s example perfectly illustrates the great dependency of effective decisions and organization’s profitability on business research.
References
Chooper, R. D., & Schindler, S. P. (2008). Business Research Methods.
(10th Edition) New York: McGray-Hill/Irwin.
Chooper, R. D., & Schindler, S. P. (2008). Business Research Methods.
(10th Edition) New York: McGray-Hill/Irwin.[DVD/VIDEO]
Demere, M. (1996).Goodyear Aquatred Tire - In Deep Water. Motor Trend.
Retrieved May 7 2010 from: http://www.motortrend.com/womt/112_9602_goodyear_aquatred_tire/index.html
N.D. (2010). The Goodyear tire and rubber company-history-overview. Hoovers a D&B
Company. Retrieved via ProQuest, May 5 2010.
Miller, D. S., & Liem, M. K., (2004). Collaborative forecasting: Goodyear Tire and
Rubber company’ journey. The Journal of Business Forecasting Methods and
Systems. Flushing: 23, 23
No comments:
Post a Comment