Hyundai Takes Buyback Promotion for a Spin
Maybe finding just the right marketing campaign can overcome any sales resistance. There are certainly those who believe that the right combination of words, images and offers can sell anything to almost anyone.
But Hyundai Motor America isn’t of that school of thought. The U.S. division of the South Korean auto maker thinks that when economic times get so uncertain that people are worried about keeping a roof over their heads or food on the table, they need more to motivate them to buy a car than an “employee sale price” and the usual TV shots of the Pacific Coast Highway in the rain.
Facing up to the reality of hard times for its buyers over the past weekend, the company introduced the “Hyundai Buyer Assurance Program,” which basically says that if you lose your job or otherwise undergo “an involuntary loss of income” within a year of buying one of their cars, you can bring it back penalty-free as long as the depreciation is less than $7,500.
Here’s the details. If within 12 months after you buy a Hyundai, you suffer that income loss for one of a number of reasons—job loss, physical disability, personal bankruptcy for self-employed workers, overseas transfer or a few others—then you can sell the car back to Hyundai for the same price you paid. Hyundai will cover that depreciation up to $7,500.
There are conditions, of course: You have to have made at least two payments on whatever loan or lease you took to get the car, and your payments have to be up to date. And if you manage to put more than $7,500 worth of wear and tear on the car, as determined by Hyundai, you’re on the hook for that amount.
This seems like more than a buyer incentive promotion: It’s a big re-thinking of the relationship between buyer and seller. Hyundai looked around and realized that its sales problem lies with the customers who can afford a car now but are unwilling to take on debt that could worsen their future should they get laid off. Rather than offering discounts (that many car shoppers don’t believe are real anyway) or cute contests, the company went straight to the heart of the logjam.
Let’s see if it works. But it has definitely caught the attention of the media, and that should help Hyundai get more buzz among the general public. My own very informal poll of about 20 friends and contacts over the last few days indicates that all of them had heard of the program.
None are in the market for a car right now—sorry, Hyundai—but many were struck by the straight-talk approach of the ads.
“I was just surprised to hear the words ‘buy a car’ and ‘laid off’ in the same commercial,” said my friend Ken S. “It’s definitely not the usual balloons and George Washington behind the wheel of an SUV.”
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Related Topics: The Pro Shop - Opinion, The Pro Shop - General, The Pro Shop - Retail
February 23rd, 2009 at 1:14 am
Who is the lender, i.e., conventional banks, credit unions, etc., or Hyundai?