RE : Re: RE PSU students in need of peugeot info
From: coupe404 (tippett@pacificcoast.net)
Date: Sun 17 Nov 2002 - 14:41:01 EST
--- In peugeot-L@y..., <stan.orand@9...> wrote:
> They would need to enter Canada and the United States with a very
good
> plan. I doubt they could ever succeed. Things have changed and
remember
> this is a European company. They would have to find bilingual
persons
> who could share their vision (I guess French people).
Absolutely not!!!
That is one of Peugeot's main mistakes in the 1970-1990 period. All
of the senior executives in the USA were French. I don't want to
sound rude, but these people were no good because:
1) They were third-rate junior executives, shipped to "the colonies"
as a way-post along the road to getting back to France, hence they
had ZERO interest in developing the US market. Their main goal was
to survive and get back to the homeland as soon as possible;
2) They were breathtakingly clueless about how the US auto market
works. All of the incorrect assumptions about the US car market that
the French carmakers hold so dearly are wrong. i.e.: US people only
want luxury cars (a fatal error when your best products are small
hatchbacks - Peugeot has never made a legitimate luxury car),
European attitudes to consumer protection can be imposed on the USA
(nope, hello Lemon Law), only fully-loaded versions of the cars they
DO sell over here are worthy of importation, a token presence here is
enough, Peugeot is a BMW competitor (oh, please), I could go on and
on...
No, Peugeot needs to have people who actually understand the US
market in command before they consider coming back. So their totally
Franco-centric corporate culture will have to open up, perhaps by
offering a proven unilingual American (or bilingual Québecois) a very
senior management position in the parent company and the presidency
of the USA/Canada division, and backing it up by offering REAL pull
to this person at the Board of Directors in France. Language is NOT
the issue here at all. If the primary concern of Peugeot is that the
US manager must be bilingual, it shows how incompetent Peugeot
company still is. Look at Carlos Ghosn in Japan. THAT is wat is
needed by Peugeot in the USA, someone like him but with spectacular
experience in the USA.
If Peugeot goes down the path they have been down before, they
certainly will fail in the USA. They need to grow intellectually
before success in North America will come. I am not holding my
breath ;-)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sun 17 Nov 2002 - 14:41:22 EST