JultikaUniversity of Oulu repository

Global luxury automotive industry faces one of the most competitive and dynamic markets in the world. The focus of this research has been to discover the corporate strategies relating to competitive positioning and differentiation via brand personality. Both Aaker brand personality framework and specifically for this industry developed luxury automotive strategy framework are applied for content analysis data, which has been extracted from the mission and vision statements of four case companies: Audi, BMW, Daimler and Ferrari. The empirical research has been divided in to three separate research questions concerning luxury automotive industry positioning and differentiation. The first research question stated: “How Audi, BMW, Daimler and Ferrari express their corporate brand personality in their mission and vision statements?” Based on the data analysis and application of two different brand personality frameworks, each of the four automotive companies express their brand personalities with unique corporate brand profiles. The second research question stated: “How Audi, BMW, Daimler and Ferrari position and/or differentiate themselves in the luxury automotive industry using mission and vision statements?” Based on the data analysis and application of two different brand personality frameworks, most of the luxury automotive companies positioned themselves very similarly within the Aaker brand personality framework. However, in the luxury automotive framework further differences in positioning were seen. Differentiation was minimal with Aaker brand personality framework application, and slightly more prevalent in the luxury automotive framework. Finally, the third research question stated: “Are there differences in positioning and differentiation for Audi, BMW, Daimler and Ferrari if alternative brand personality framework is used to complement Aaker brand personality framework?” Based on the data analysis there were differences in positioning, however similarly, most companies seemed to align their position with the competition. Daimler and Ferrari stood out by focusing more on their deep-rooted heritage.