Porsche 2010 Annual Report Download - page 75

Porsche-specific customer care. In addition, compre-
hensive international monitoring of customer satisfac-
tion with products and services is used to identify
additional opportunities for consistently communicat-
ing the Porsche brand experience and the high quality
of customer care. The dedicated and highly profes-
sional partners at the Porsche centers play a key role
in delivering and ensuring the quality of this care. The
retail organization is actively integrated into the chain
comprising customer satisfaction, customer feedback
and improvement processes.
Porsche’s top ratings in a wide range of polls
are testimony to the success of Porsche’s firm focus
on customers. In the reporting year, readers of the
magazine “Consumer Reports” voted the Porsche
Boxster the best vehicle in the entire market. The
magazine polled 1.3 million U.S. vehicle customers
and readers on their experiences during the previous
twelve months. The Porsche brand took second place
overall. Visitors to the edmunds.com car portal again
rated the Boxster as the consumers’ favorite in the
Best Convertible category. In addition, the prestigious
“Car and Driver Magazine” included the Boxster and
Cayman in its 10 Best list of cars sold in the USA; and
“Automobile Magazine” honored both models with its
coveted All-Star award.
In addition to providing outstanding care for
existing customers, Porsche has been very success-
ful in acquiring new customers and sparking their
enthusiasm for the Porsche brand. The company’s
own studies deliver detailed insight into the series
and variants that hold the greatest appeal for drivers
of other brands. When it came to attracting new
customer groups for Porsche, the Panamera and new
Cayenne were particularly successful: the attractive-
ness of Porsche for potential customers is clearly
indicated by the Panamera’s top ranking in a large
number of relevant customer surveys. For example,
the Panamera won the “Golden Steering Wheel” for
the year’s best new car in the luxury class. The acco-
lade is awarded by German magazines “Bild am
Sonntag”, “Auto Bild” and affiliated European titles on
the basis of 250,000 readers’ votes. The Cayenne
took the “Golden Steering Wheel” in the SUV cate-
gory. Moreover, readers of “Autozeitung” voted the
Panamera overall winner in the Luxury Class category.
In the same poll, the Porsche 911 took top honors in
the Sports Car category.
Sales structure of the Volkswagen group
The Volkswagen group’s multibrand structure
promotes the independence of its brands and was
honed further in 2010. The board of management
sales function was reorganized in 2010 with the goal
of optimizing the Volkswagen group’s cross-brand
sales activities. This enabled us to create ideal con-
ditions for steadily increasing volume and market
share and for lifting earnings contributions and sales
efficiency while optimizing costs.
To leverage synergies and to optimize the
exchange of information among dealers and with the
Volkswagen group’s wholesale operations, the inte-
gration of dealers into the group’s IT system was
driven forward in 2010. The group’s close working
relationship with dealers and their profitability is a
focus of its distribution network strategy. The Volks-
wagen group handles 85 percent of its wholesale
business through companies within the group. In
2010, this business was strengthened by setting up
a central department for the national sales compa-
nies that is tasked with increasing the transparency
of sales activities, improving cost management and
integrating the activities of the brands more closely
for better use of synergies. This enables the best
practice approaches of individual companies to be
transferred to the other wholesale companies quickly
and efficiently. The central department will be in-
strumental in helping the Volkswagen group achieve
the goals laid down in the Group Strategy 2018.
Customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in
the Volkswagen group
Against the background of growing customer
demands, one of the areas on which the Volkswagen
group’s sales activities have focused – and will conti-
nue to focus – is on improving customer satisfaction.
In 2010, the Volkswagen group therefore specifically
implemented processes and measures that further
increased the satisfaction of its vehicle buyers and
73