Now that we are finishing up on the first year of Element availability, is Honda corporate pleased with the sales results? Seems that the Pilot, which is also new, has outsold the Element. Just curious how they are viewing the first year's sales results.

the original sales target for the E was 50,000 units........if im not mistaken they have met the target and then some.

That's a really good question! 8)

Which likely doesn't have an easy answer. E sales numbers alone may not necessarily show the whole picture. The E was intended to build a new market (the old "Gen Y males" thing), but the real demo has been primarily older Gen X'ers and younger Boomers. So there is significant risk that the E took buyers away from CR-Vs and Pilots, known in the trade as cannibalization.

OTOH, the E could have brought buyers into showrooms from other makes (count me as one of 'em), and therefore sales of all Honda SUVs might have benefitted.

So "pleased" is relative. If '03 Pilots and CR-Vs improved over '02, and the E added new market, then everybody won. If compared to LY the numbers dropped, stayed flat, or rose too little (less profit for Honda in an E), then some Honda market analysts have work to do.

Yeah so then I guess it depends on the price of cheese in Russia if ya really think about it cause if people really wanted to sell 50,000 pieces of cheese but all the sudden started to like the wine that they had with the cheese so much that they forgot about the cheese it would be hard to tell if the cheese was bad or there was really just confounding variables that masked the true nature of the cheese affair in the first place to begin with.






:roll:

[quote:ccc7641556="zarathustra"]Yeah so then I guess it depends on the price of cheese in Russia if ya really think about it cause if people really wanted to sell 50,000 pieces of cheese but all the sudden started to like the wine that they had with the cheese so much that they forgot about the cheese it would be hard to tell if the cheese was bad or there was really just confounding variables that masked the true nature of the cheese affair in the first place to begin with.
:roll:[/quote:ccc7641556]

Now that explains it. (?)

As far as being pleased...i think Honda should be disappointed in the fact that they missed their target audience...Working at a dealer i see the people that have been buying the E in our market.And they deffinately do not fit the demographic Honda was aiming for.My primary reason for buying the E was that it looked different than anything on the road and the way the doors open made it easy for me to get my stuff in and out of the back seat.At 35 i would not describe myself as having an active lifestyle....but i was able to keep my mountain bike in back all summer and still have ample space left over.

[quote:fd5968a093="zarathustra"]Yeah so then I guess it depends on the price of cheese in Russia if ya really think about it cause if people really wanted to sell 50,000 pieces of cheese but all the sudden started to like the wine that they had with the cheese so much that they forgot about the cheese it would be hard to tell if the cheese was bad or there was really just confounding variables that masked the true nature of the cheese affair in the first place to begin with.
:roll:[/quote:fd5968a093]

Not neccesarily...It was probably the marketing doofus's fault. By attempting to increase cheese sales, they merely accelerated the wine market, they did not take into account the fact that their target market was a country with the worlds largest alcoholic population.
Metaphorically speaking, we the partially quasi-semi-intelligent consumers have been dying for a drink(efficient, versatile, simple car) so when one became available, we bought it! Even though it came with cheeze(EX model). See?

[quote:2358660394=" "]As far as being pleased...i think Honda should be disappointed in the fact that they missed their target audience...Working at a dealer i see the people that have been buying the E in our market.And they deffinately do not fit the demographic Honda was aiming for.My primary reason for buying the E was that it looked different than anything on the road and the way the doors open made it easy for me to get my stuff in and out of the back seat.At 35 i would not describe myself as having an active lifestyle....but i was able to keep my mountain bike in back all summer and still have ample space left over.[/quote:2358660394]

i don't think so. The average buying age of Element is 41, which is 4 years younger than Honda's average of 45. That means, the car does attract slightly younger crowd.

also, look at the sales number. E achieve 62K+ unit sales to date without much erosion into CRV market. Pilot and MDX are run away success of their own right. All measure indicates Honda hit the jackpot in terms of product line positioning.

http://www.hondabeat.com/sales_stats.php

lastly, maybe this Generation X targeting is no more than just a marketing scheme. it is done just to attract people young at heart, want something different, and would otherwise buying something drastically different (mini, X-terra, Forester, WRX, for example), rather than yet another reliable, run of the mill Honda. :-)

[quote:ab4eb20a73=" "]lastly, maybe this Generation X targeting is no more than just a marketing scheme. it is done just to attract people young at heart, want something different, and would otherwise buying something drastically different (mini, X-terra, Forester, WRX, for example), rather than yet another reliable, run of the mill Honda. :-)[/quote:ab4eb20a73]

Yeah, a forester/outback/legacy_wagon was at the top of the list before the element hit my radar.

-brendan