Himafagy

In Europe, Audi is a brand to be reckoned with. Globally, Audi is only behind such juggernauts as Mercedes and BMW for luxury supremacy, with sales of 903,000 vehicles worldwide. Here in the USA, however, Audi is playing catch-up. With only 90,000 sales, Audi is currently behind Lexus, BMW, Mercedes, Cadillac, Acura, Lincoln, Infiniti, and Volvo. As a matter of fact, both the Lexus RX 350 and the BMW 3 Series best the Audi brand on its own. Only the A4 puts up respectable numbers, totaling about 50,000 sales in '06. Well, nothing increases sales numbers more than new product and right now Audi is in the middle of launching 19 new products between 2005 and 2007. The A3 and Q7 have been in the market for some time, the TT, R8 and recently spied A5 are coming just around the bend.

With all the new products coming on board, the next step for Audi will be to improve its image and get its vehicles to the forefront of customers minds. To do that, Audi executives are looking to improve marketing, dive head-first into internet-based ads, and add more exclusive Audi dealers. With Americans looking more and more at luxury vehicles as a source of expression, Audi is executing its strategy at the right time. Audi's long-term goal is to produce 1.4 million vehicles by 2015. That would give the German automaker about 80,000 more sales than the BMW group had in 2006. Good luck, Audi. Good luck.

[Source: Auto Week]

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