Trouvé is dedicated to revolutionising worldwide vehicle class and providing the customers with a radically different driving experience. Trouvé technology makes it possible that the customer, the electric car, and the nature could be balanced by connecting in brandnew ways. Company background
Trouvé Motors, Inc. is a French company that focuses on the designing, manufacturing and selling premium electric vehicles. Based in Sophia Antipolis Foundation and operating in
Europe, North America and Asia, Trouvé is founded in 2002 by a group of sophiaantipolis foundation engineers who set out to prove that electric cars can be legendary. Trouvé, a public company trading on the Euronext stock exchange under the symbol V, is named after French electrical engineer and inventor Gustave Trouvé who invented the first electric powered automobile. The company first gained widespread attention following its production of Trouvé S, the fastest fully electric sports car in 2004. With this breakthrough, Trouvé made its name in the electric car field and announced a "strategic partnership" with Nissan, which agreed to purchase
€50 billion per year for the design patent and being in charge of its sales marketing in Japan from
Sep. 2005. Trouvé has over 9,000 employees, around 30% of whom are engaged in highfashion design and hightech engineering. Among these years, Western Europe especially UK has been considered as one key market for expansion.
Marketing audit
Microenvironment
The microenvironment refers to the business itself and to all the challenges that come from inside the business. Businesses can therefore take control over all the challenges and influences in the micro environment. The major factors of the microenvironment are customers, competitors and suppliers. Current and potential customers: Currently, the major purchasers tend to be the environmentfriendly people. Besides targeting the electric cars on these “green” customers and passing the responsible attitude on towards green issues, Trouvé is candidly stressing the significance of the potential customers who would be attracted by its highfashion design, spectacular driving experience as well as an elevated brand image created. The conception which should be delivered to customers is that Trouvé is more than an ecocar. What is more, according to Steve Walker (2014)
(http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/bestcars/86169/bestelectriccarssale), as fuel prices rise, the cost of electric cars drop relatively while the network of charging stations increases. That is to say, in the contemporary UK market, relatively low price becomes another obvious advantage of the electric cars which would make contribution to the customer expansions.
Competitors:
Trouvé faces stiff competition which comes from the fuel cars and other electric car brands.
Although electric cars are becoming a more common sight on UK roads (Walker, 2014), what is undeniable is that there still exist many blue chip national or international electric car manufacturers that are currently dominating the market whom Trouvé will have to compete against. The manufacturers worth mentioning such as Nissan, Toyota are amongst the dominating companies and moreover, some luxurious car brands started to set foot in the electric car field. One representative example is BMW, which launched a new series called ‘BMW i’, competing for the market shares.
It is obvious that the ability to be differentiated from other high quality substitutions comes crucial. Nowadays, factors influencing competitions are countless and vary due to specific situation. If taking the brandloyalty into consideration, Trouvé would lose out to some timehonored brands. Thus, concentrating on the core technology and focusing on the marketing strategy should be balanced. Suppliers Unlike many traditional manufacturers, Trouvé operates as an original equipment