Acura gets own marketing division as sedan sales slide
Luxury automaker Acura will get its own team to help market its products after the brand reportedly saw a drop in sales of its sedans.
Acura unveils the TLX prototype to the media at the Canadian International Auto Show in Toronto last month. Honda, Acura's parent company, will assign a marketing division to its luxury brand for the first time in its history.
Chris Young/The Canadian Press/AP/File
From April 1, Acura will have its own sales and marketing division separate to that of Honda for the first time. The move is intended to create greater clarity and more cohesive sales and marketing plans that are better suited for its products, Acura said in a statement.
Acura managed to sell 165,436 vehicles in 2013, which was a 5.9 increase on the previous year and the best sales total since 2007. But as Bloomberg points out, Acura also experienced a 10 percent drop in combined sales of its ILX, TSX, TL and RLX sedans.
To be fair, the TSX and TL are on their last legs and are soon to be replaced by a single model, the 2015 TLX, this summer. However, both the ILX and RLX are relatively new and the sedan sales slide is occurring at a time when the luxury segment is booming.
Heading the new Acura division will be Michael Accavitti. Reporting to him will be Erik Berkman, who has been put in charge of a new Acura Business Planning Office. This new entity will focus on strengthening the business and product strategies for the Acura brand.
It is not clear yet what strategy Acura will undertake as it moves forward, though it may be one centered on the brand’s performance image. This year a racing version of the upcoming TLX sedan will enter the highly competitive Pirelli World Challenge, and in 2015 we’ll finally see the launch of Acura’s second-generation NSX.