Marketing to Me
Automakers Getting a Taste for Vegan Values: Pleasing those who shun animal products is seen as key to reaching a wider, affluent group. By Sharon Bernstein, L.A. Times Staff Writer. August 23, 2004.
Is your car vegan?
...to automobile manufacturers trying to win favor among the increasing number of consumers who say they are environmentally conscious, vegans - who avoid all animal products - are what one marketing expert called the center of the bull's-eye.
Pleasing vegans, the theory goes, is key to reaching a wider group of consumers - affluent shoppers who worry about the environment and who are willing to pay extra for food, clothing and even automobiles, if they are made in ways that do less harm to the planet.
Other excerpts:
Ford Motor Co., under fire from environmental activists for its gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles, ran an eight-page advertisement in the New Yorker magazine touting the company's green credentials. The ad led off with the boast that 11 members of the design team for the company's soon-to-be-released hybrid Escape SUV are vegetarians, and its leader is a vegan.
Vegans themselves are not a powerful market force. Joe Marra, executive director of a market research firm that specializes in environmentally conscious consumers, said vegetarians make up just 1.5% of the general population, and vegans hardly register at all.
But Marra's firm, the Natural Marketing Institute, has done research showing that more than a quarter of the adult population, about 56 million people nationwide, say they look for products that are "healthy and sustainable." And the vast majority of these consumers say they are willing to pay significantly more for environmentally friendly products.
This broader circle of crossover consumers accounts for $226.8 billion in sales of alternative products, including organic foods, cruelty-free cosmetics and, increasingly, hybrid and other vehicles that emit less air pollution than typical vehicles, said Brad Warkins, president of Conscious Media.
Warkins puts on an annual trade show for companies that want to reach these consumers. Eight years ago, he said, the conference drew a few small companies; last year, it attracted 800 representatives from hundreds of businesses, including Ford Motor Co. and Time Warner Inc.
Sherri Shapiro, who is directing Ford's marketing campaign for the Escape hybrid, defines the target buyers this way: They have higher than average educational levels and household incomes, they tend to live in metropolitan areas, they read more than average and they watch less TV.
When I bought my Saturn LS2 back in late 2000, I compromised on two things -- the steering wheel was covered in leather, and I got the larger V6 engine over the more efficient 4-cylinder. My dad convinced me that the V6 would be safer and have better resale value, and that model only came with the leather wheel.
I regret my decision a little -- the car is fun to drive, but I think I would have been fine with the smaller enginer and plastic wheel, and I plan on driving it until either it gets wrecked, or the cost of maintaining it gets to be untennable. By then, there should be plenty of vegan-friendly hybrids around to pick from, I hope.
In truth, I've only driven it about 34K over four years, so while a smaller engine would have been better for the Earth, the difference in efficency so far has been about 250 gallons of gas. If I'd done the same mileage in a hybrid that got 50MPG, I'd have saved about 900 gallons.