I'm not so sure that's a bad thing for me, but I do think it's a bad thing for corporate America.
The latest example of this came to me this week when I rented a car to drive down to see my parents. As you know if you read this blog we are in the process of shopping for a new car and so we saw this as an opportunity to try out one of the cars we've got on our list. I made the reservation to get an economy car and looked forward to driving it.
My first disappointment came when I heard what type of car it was a Chevy Aveo. This is the one car we had already eliminated from our list. But I though who knows maybe after driving it I'll really like the car.
Now this is where me and corporate America don't think alike. Now if I'm General Motors and I'm selling cars to Enterprise then I want those cars to meet a certain level of luxury because I know that every person that gets behind the wheel to drive it is a potential future customer. To me that minimal level means: automatic transmission, anti-lock brakes, air conditioning, cruise control, power locks, and CD player. This Aveo I got into had air conditioning and automatic transmission but none of the others. Now I understand that anti-lock breaks might be a stretch, but I feel that if you keep someone from crashing their rental car they will remember and be impressed with the product. If they jam on the break and slide right into a wreck they will remember and not be impressed. If they are driving a long distance and they like to use cruise and their is none, they will remember. If they are traveling with their family and their is no power locks they will remember.
Needless to say the Aveo is still of the list, but who know if General Motors had viewed this as a marketing option instead of just a quick and dirty sell things may have been different.
