3 Use laddering to define customer values with respect to cars:

a Invite a car owner for an interview b Define the usage situation on which you wish to focus during the interview

(motivation for using the car: commute, leisure, etc.)

c Identify the benefits associated with using the car in that usage situation d Finally, define the underlying values for this car owner Kia certainly didn’t pull any punches when it came to describing how British consumers might see the brand. ‘Low value’, ‘budget’, and ‘small’ were just some of the words that Kia’s marketing director David Hilbert singled out. But that is all changing with the South Korean manufacturer investing in its ambitious plan to go premium and going full speed ahead in electric cars.

The car brand has been in the UK for around 30 years, so Hilbert claims it is still ‘quite a new brand’, which is one of the reasons people on the street who know Kia but don’t own one ‘still have the perception that we do low-value or budget cars’. In recent years, however, Kia has set out to change perceptions by releasing more premium cars, such as its Sportage and Sorento models. Its flagship in the electric and hybrid car segment, the Kia Niro, has become one of the leading cars in that segment. Another crown jewel in Kia’s lineup is the Stinger. It is the result of nearly 10 years worth of design and engineering, and a model Hilbert, who joined the brand in 2016 to drive the transformation, argues redefines Kia as a ‘luxury performance’ brand.

‘The launch of the Stinger is a way to challenge those perceptions of the Kia brand. Over the past few years you can see how we’ve developed our product range to really move away from that initial small car status we had in the UK’, he says.

‘Our newer models are quite polarizing in their design, and that makes them stand out from the crowd’.