INFINITI, THE LUXURY DIVISION OF Japanese automaker Nissan, plans to increase its marketing budget by 20% this year and focus on women consumers for its new small crossover vehicle and G coupe, says Vice President of Marketing Jan Thompson.
Thompson says that Infiniti has an opportunity with women consumers in part because so few women put the brand on their shopping list. She says while some luxury brands are evenly split between male and female buyers, Infiniti still skews male at around 64% for the overall brand.
"We are really a young company in that we focused a lot on our performance--which attracted more males than females to the brand," Thompson said in an interview this week. "But now I think that younger women are more accepting of performance. They think of themselves as performing at a high level personally, and they expect that kind of performance in the products they use. They also see sexiness in performance."
Infiniti will introduce its new small crossover at the New York auto show in April. It hasn't released the name of the vehicle yet. It also will roll out the second generation of the G Coupe. Thompson expects both vehicles to attract women buyers, but she says the brand will need to find ways to be "contextually relevant to women, which is different than the way we speak to male consumers."