Great thread...

If you want to talk Ferrari's and such, yeah it doesn't matter utility at
all... charge what you want and make it sexy, exclusive and fast. Cessna
can't do this regardless of the design, however (how many times have you
equated "Cessna" with sexy, exclusive, and fast?)

They could pull the same trick as the Japanese auto makers and start a new
brand (a la Lexus (Toyota), Acura (Honda), Infinity (Nissan)), but "Cessna"
as sexy would be a long expensive pull from a marketing perspective.

At the end of the day, the question Cessna should ask themselves, is what
niche do they want to excel at? Do they want to be the GA dream plane, or
do they want to be the most performing practical utility option? If they
try to be all things to all people, they will fail. I tend to think the
practical segment has more dollars in it, but Cirrus seems to have done a
good job at getting a good deal of practical into an attractive package.
It's up to Cessna to market themselves apart from Cirrus to make sure the
public gets the picture they want them to have.

Cessna needs, and should have by now, a wake up call regarding their ancient
designs, but they need not stray from what has made them "successful" for
decades.

"Greg Copeland" wrote in message
news
On Fri, 30 Sep 2005 18:41:11 +0000, Dave Stadt wrote:

nothing to do with performance. People don't spend $350K based on
"perception." Most people I know do not believe in your "perception."
To

If people didn't care about "perception", companies like Harley would have
been out of business two decades ago. Heck, I've known people that have
bought items like Porche, Ferrari, and Lamborghini just because of
"perception."

In fact, I would hazzard a guess that the vast majority of people do buy
things based solely on perception. Heck, it plays a MAJOR role in car
buying for the masses. Believe it or not, car purchases in the US is
considered an impulse buy. That tells me that they are buying strictly
based on perception rather than product knowledge.

Greg