I’d written earlier that GM’s satisfaction guarantee was an act of desperation, something a car company would do when it had few, if any, other options. Desperation move or not, early results show it’s working, with GM’s sales up 5 percent in October in an overall flat market. All four of GM’s surviving brands were up for the month.
It wasn’t just the guarantee: GM hit the airways hard, heavily pushing the “May the Best Car Win” theme, with Chevrolet the primary focus. And incentives were up substantially, especially for Chevrolet, and the trade-in data suggests it’s overwhelmingly GM buyers coming back for another.
But none of that matters right now. Market share was up, and GM is hinting that November will be strong as well. GM needed a big month, and some good news, and got both. The guarantee seems to be what got the ball rolling, so it has to be judged a success so far. Sometimes desperation plays pay off.
Photo Credit: www.gm.com
Another Hyundai follow-up: There’s a reset happening in the U.S. car biz, caused by the financial/economic meltdown, the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler, and even recent quality glitches from Toyota. A handful of brands are capitalizing on this reset, perhaps none more so than Hyundai, which is winning awards, gaining share and garnering more media attention. Hyundai wants the world to know this, so it created 
I understand that retailers still have to keep turning over stock during hard times. But some are going about this in a way that does serious damage to their brands. JoS. A. Bank, the North American menswear chain, had a reputation of offering pretty good stuff at a fair value. That image is gone, as their recent promotions have me believing their prices are pure fiction. The base offer is now “buy one, get one free,” and they also do a “buy one suit, get another suit AND a sport coat free” on Mondays and Tuesdays, with similar deals available on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
What screams value more than an unlimited quantity at a fixed price? Given today’s ultra-value-conscious consumers, the “All You Can …” offers are increasing, and they’re no longer limited to crab legs. JetBlue did an all-you-can-fly for a month, for $599. The 
Warrior Lacrosse
The U.S. government wants to stimulate new vehicle sales, so along comes “Cash for Clunkers.” The original idea was to pay people to trade the oldest, most inefficient vehicles for more fuel-efficient cars, but it quickly devolved to a plain old cash incentive, meant simply to move metal. Any metal, it seems, as someone driving a big SUV could trade it in for a new big SUV and still get the cash (as long as it gets 2 whole mpg more than the old vehicle). (The cash-for-clunkers program has proven so popular in fact that much—if not all—of the $1 billion Congress had allocated toward it has already been used up, 
