Market share challenges

Companies often announce their long-term market share goals, not only to guide strategy but also to signal competitive aggressiveness and give stakeholders (employees, customers, suppliers and more) a very positive view of the firm's future. Of course, once goals are set, the firms must also measure and explain their progress toward these future targets.

Actually determining market share isn't easy for some industries or products . . . but it's very easy in the automotive market, where performance measures such as the number of car registrations are readily available. Numbers alone don't tell the whole story: it's important to look at trends over time and see the big picture of what's happening in the overall market.

The auto lobby group ACEA believes European car sales will again shrink this year, which means automakers will be fighting each other for sales there rather than increasing the size of the overall market. Given the difficult economic situation and the intense competitive rivalry, achieving share increases will be a real challenge.

Opel has been losing share in Germany since 2005. Now it has set a goal of reversing the trend and attaining a 10% share of that market in the coming years. Can Opel turn that goal into reality?

Meanwhile, South Korea's Kia and Hyundai are putting extra marketing muscle into connecting with sports fans in Europe, with the result that their market share is going up. As they continue to move upmarket, how deeply will these companies cut into the share of European car firms that have traditionally been strong in their home market?