Word: marketization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...auto industry had a good though uneven year in 1998, then many foreign brands had a great one. U.S. manufacturers continue to benefit from the popularity of light trucks and SUVs, sales of which grew 8.2% last year. But in a market in which sales of traditional sedans are stalled, car buyers have lately been going for upscale vehicles at unprecedented levels. In 1998 Mercedes' sales rose 39.2%, Jaguar's increased 15.4%, Lexus' jumped 60.2% (partly due to the addition of the RX300 to its lineup), while Audi's and Porsche's rose 39% and 33%, respectively. Overall sales...
Indeed, the luxury movement represents the industry's first significant market shift since the introduction of the minivan and the Jeep Grand Cherokee in the mid-1980s. And it suggests that the old model developed by General Motors' Alfred P. Sloan in the early 1920s, which sliced the industry into carefully graded segments and moved consumers up as their income rose, may be headed for extinction. Instead, as automakers lavish more and more attention on a narrower, wealthier band of consumer, the U.S. is moving to a more European marketing model built around sales of luxury cars to the affluent...
...home teams, the boom in top-of-the-line sport-utility vehicles has helped expand the market for luxury in new directions and fatten the profits of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler as Motown-made Navigators, Expeditions and Grand Cherokees have amassed the lion's share of the SUV segment. Last year SUVs accounted for 17.7% of overall Big Three sales, up from 12.7% five years ago. But even that segment is under pressure. In Detroit this week BMW is unveiling its X5, a so-called sport-activity vehicle that combines the company's vaunted performance with a light truck...
Much of the Big Three's luxury lag has to do with changing consumer tastes. The high-end market has detoured dramatically from the posh, living-room-on-wheels tradition of Cadillacs and Lincolns that once defined upper-middle-class status. Today's luxury buyers, guided by the Information Age, are less extravagant, more practical and technologically sharper. "The status symbol used to be 'I've got money,'" says Jim Press, general manager of Toyota Motor Sales USA. "But here in the late 1990s, it's 'I've got good taste.' The days of conspicuous consumption are gone...
...worry in some parts of Washington is that even if most Y2K problems are ironed out, pre-2000 panic could have a real impact. If people are worried about the stability of the economy, they might pull their money out of the stock market, which, if nothing else, would cause real dips in the market. Bank runs stoked by fear could be as bad as actual computer-generated bank problems, says Senator Robert Bennett, the Utah Republican who heads the Senate's Year 2000 committee. As a precaution, the Federal Reserve plans to print an extra $50 billion...