Enterprise Rent-A-Car is an US-based car rental organization in Clayton, Missouri in United States. Apart from car rental, the company engages in commercial fleet management, second hand car sales and commercial truck rental operations. This company found in the year 1957 by Jack C. Taylor. The company was initially named as Executive easing Company; however, in 1969, it was renamed it as Enterprise. In 2009, it became the subsidiary part of the parent company Enterprise Holding, Inc. and with more than 100,000 employees currently working in around 5400 domestic and 90 international locations in UK, Canada, Germany, Spain and Ireland (Fraiberger & Sundararanjan, 2015). The main objective of the organization is to provide the best transportation service across the world and meet the need of the customer by providing excellent service, quality and values. The company intended to serve the entire community as a committed corporate citizen.
The car rental industry in the United States has been rapidly geared up over the last few years. Some factors such as online easy booking rental car services, drastic growth in travel and tourism sector and customer’s preference towards more comfortable and easy travelling are associated with this rapid growth. Enterprise Rent-A-Car solely focuses on new technical innovations in order to attract the customer. They provide numerous schemes and offers to sustain their old and loyal customers. Although the company is the biggest car rental company in North America, its top three major competitors include Carey Worldwide, The Hertz Corporation and FarePortal.
The company specializes in providing vehicles to the customer on a rental basis. Reasons may include business and weekend trips, emergency and special occasions and many other. Their initial target market was the neighbourhood customers; however, with the growing market condition, they expanded their market (Fraiberger & Sundararanjan, 2015). Optimizing marketing mix is the basic responsibility of marketing. Through offering products with the proper combination of four P’s they improve the marketing objectives (Huang & Sarigöllü, 2014). Within their domain, the 4P’s that composed the marketing plan have been discussed in the following section.
Product: Enterprise Rent-A-Car offers a variety of rental cars starting from Fiat Palio, VW Polo Sedan and Gol, Hyundai Elantra, Nissan Altima to commercial trucks and vans according to the customer needs and expectations (Grant 2016). One of their product strategies includes the distinctive pick up service. Moreover, Enterprise’s Flex-E-Rent services and corporate rental programme are few of the strategies of their product development.
Price: Enterprise charges competitive prices compare to its competitors. To rent a car with perfect condition, customer has to pay around $30 or less per day. The company offers variable rates for the specific season of the year (Grant 2016). During lean season such as winter and fall, they concentrate on local customer offering cheaper than the normal rates. However, for the pick season such as summer and Christmas, their offers are comparatively higher.
Place: Place represents the store or location where the product can be purchased which is also refers to the distribution channel. Enterprise’s store includes virtual as well as physical stores in different location across the United States and other part of the world. A crucial fact for Enterprise’s growth is that their stores mainly located near airports and to the main hotels. They also have the virtual platform where tourism-related contents, online transaction and customer feedback have been shown.
Promotion: Promotion refers the communication through which the company can promote themselves in the marketing world. Enterprise uses Google, various travel agencies and social media platforms. They also make partnerships with several travel agencies and develop special rental packages. They promote their business via online magazines and websites.
Here, the financial data of the parent company Enterprise Holding have been analysed.
Year |
Revenue (billion) |
2012 |
$15.4 |
2013 |
$16.4 |
2014 |
$17.8 |
2015 |
$19.4 |
2016 |
$20.9 |
2017 |
$22.3 |
In the 2012 fiscal year, the company achieved a record revenue and profitability of $15.4bn (David et al., 2017). The company has total globalized asset $27.3 billion; a hike of 3.8 billion compared to the previous year (Busse et al., 2017). In 2013, they generated $16.4bn in revenue annually thereby strengthening their position in the global market in terms of revenues and fleet management. In 2014, their revenue further increased to $17.8bn and in 2015, they extended it to $19.4bn and they were able to increase their fleet size to 1.7 million in that year. Next year their annual revenue jumped to $20.9bn, an 8.1% increase compared to the last year and their vehicle size increased to 1.9 million (David et al., 2017). Finally, sixty years after their incorporation, in the current year they generated $22.3bn, 6.5% increase compared to the last year (Busse et al., 2017). Therefore, from the above financial analysis, it can definitely be argued that the company is making its profit throughout the last few years as their revenue is constantly increasing year after year.
This company is an internationally recognized brand in 85 countries with more than 7600 locations. The company started expanding its operations in Canada, UK, Spain, Germany, Slovakia, Greece, Croatia and Ireland. They recently started expanding in Belgium, Czech Republic, Bosnia & Harzegovina, Macedonia and Cyprus. They are planning to further extend their business to 19 more European countries with the same objective of providing car rental services to the customer (Busse et al., 2017).
As the company is the subsidized group of Enterprise Holding, therefore, the parent company’s key management personnel have been discussed in this section.
Brief profile history of the founder: Jack C. Taylor, the founder of the organization used to be a salesman at a very younger age. By obtaining interest in this venture he and his assistant incorporated an office called Executive Leasing in 1957. His main objective of is to start a car leasing business. For this, he took 50% pay cut and put $25,000 for 25% in the business (Papadopoulos & Heslop, 2014). In 1969, he expanded his business outside US and forenamed the company as Enterprise after the US aircraft carrier USS Enterprise that he served during the World War. Initially, the company had seven cars. However, in early 80’s it had increased to 6000 and by early 90’s it had reached to 50,000 in number (Jeon et al., 2015).
Brief profile history of the CEO: Pamela M. Nicholson, who was the company’s President and Chief Operating Officer, had been promoted to the company CEO in 2013. She became the first CEO outside the Taylor family. She began her carrier in 1981 as a Management Trainee (“Enterprise names Pamela Nicholson CEO”, 2017). Within 9 months of her tenure, she became the Assistant Manager of the company. Within one year, she joined another organization of Southern California Group and once she is promoted, she returned back to the previous organization. Later on in 2008, she became the President and Chief Operating Officer of this company and in 2013, she occupied the CEO position.
The company’s other key personnel includes:
Current Chief Financial Officer is Rick Short who is also the Vice President of the company.
Current Chief Operating Officer is Christine Taylor who is also the Executive Vice President.
Current Chief Technical Officer is Michael Nolfo (Politics, 2017).
Strength and Weakness are the company’s internal factors and Opportunities and Threats are the external factors (Hollensen, 2012). Therefore, SWOT analysis is often called the internal-external analysis. The SWOT analysis has been discussed in the following section:
Strength · The company’s leading market position across the world in terms of car leasing · Increasing financial performance · Provides excellent customer quality and service · It has the largest fleet of vehicles across US. |
Weakness · Lower maintenance and repairing cost · The company’s objective towards the capital intensive operation · The company do not provide one way rental services |
Opportunities · A continuous trend of renting cars · Vast online usage to promote the business · Vast presence at the airport locations |
Threats · Rapid increase in fuel prices · Sudden dip in the second hand car market · Growing number of market competition · Several mergers and acquisitions |
One of the most famous car rental service providers announced their next 5-year financial goals in their current business report. As per the report, the company’s future goals are drafted using a process and are surveyed by all the employees, senior managements, major suppliers and also added it in the qualitative review and reports. Their major aim is to reduce the waste management upto 40% by 2020 (Politics, 2017). They also intended to reduce the Green House Gas emission of upto 10% by 2020 (Jeon et al., 2015). They recently concentrate on reducing direct as well as indirect energy-related cost compared to the past years. They have taken strategies to invest in workplace and also boost employees to join company events, programs and several forums.
Critical Success Factors are required to ensure the success of an organization. Some of the factors include:
Market Position: Company’s strong market position leads to have a strong bargaining power and can act a price leader in the market.
Fleet Management: Company with have better fleet management has better capability to serve customer requirements.
Operating Management: Pricing strategy and cost management are important factors to determine company’s competitiveness and operational efficiency.
Conclusion:
The company is one of the most famous companies in the vehicle rental industry. They are currently ranked as one of America’s Largest Private Companies. Moreover, it ranks on Fortune’s list of the 500 largest American public companies. Additionally, they accounts for the largest airport market share in the US. The company has been taken several initiatives to retain the loyal employees. The company’s Supplier Delivery Programme is helps ease an increase in the number of minority- and women-owned and socially, economically disadvantaged small businesses that work to provide goods and services for them.
Reference:
Busse, M., Busse, M., Swinkels, J., Swinkels, J., Merkley, G., & Merkley, G. (2017). Enterprise rent-a-car. Kellogg School of Management Cases, 1-15.
David, M. E., David, F. R., & David, F. R. (2017). The quantitative strategic planning matrix: a new marketing tool. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 25(4), 342-352.
Enterprise names Pamela Nicholson CEO. (2017). Fortune. Retrieved 25 November 2017, from https://fortune.com/2013/06/04/enterprise-names-pamela-nicholson-ceo/
Fraiberger, S. P., & Sundararajan, A. (2015). Peer-to-peer rental markets in the sharing economy.
Grant, R. M. (2016). Contemporary Strategy Analysis Text Only. John Wiley & Sons.
Hollensen, S. (2015). Marketing management: A relationship approach. Pearson Education.
Huang, R., & Sarigöllü, E. (2014). How brand awareness relates to market outcome, brand equity, and the marketing mix. In Fashion Branding and Consumer Behaviors (pp. 113-132). Springer New York.
Jeon, S., Han, C. H., Shim, S., & Yoo, B. (2015). An Online Reference Pricing System Using Business Analytics: The Case of a Rent-a-Car Company.
Papadopoulos, N., & Heslop, L. A. (2014). Product-country images: Impact and role in international marketing. Routledge.
Politics, T. (2017). Enterprise Rent-A-Car Summary | OpenSecrets. Opensecrets.org. Retrieved 25 November 2017, from https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00219642
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