Ford Volume Growth Bonus Program Could Get You a New Car Cheaper
Buying a 2015 Ford Fusion could be considerably more affordable through year’s end with Ford’s Volume Growth Bonus program
Want to buy a new C-Max, Fiesta, Focus, Fusion, or Escape? If so, this might be the right time to start considering it.
With a little less than two months remaining in 2014, Ford is creating a dealer incentive program that ostensibly offers a cash bounty between $100 and $600 for every vehicle sold between November 1 and January 2.
As reported by Bloomberg, a Nov. 1 memo outlines the Volume Growth Bonus program as a means to empower customers looking for good prices at the close of the year and give its dealers the means necessary to clear off as much year-end inventory as possible.
The Volume Growth Bonus program could also be construed as an example of what’s called a stair-step incentive program, which incentivizes dealers to move as much inventory as possible in order to hit sales projections by offering progressively larger bonuses as sales marks are hit.
Erich Merkle, Ford’s sales analyst, tells Bloomberg that the Volume Growth Bonus program is decidedly not a star-step incentive program and that it was carefully crafted over the course of several months in order to be beneficial to all parties involved.
“We worked with our dealers, including our national dealer council, to make sure the program was structured appropriately so that it would be mutually beneficial for us, our dealers and our customers,” Merkle said. “The intent was to produce a beneficial outcome from a sales perspective.”
It’s argued, however, that the program tends to benefit larger dealerships with more inventory that can afford to cut prices even deeper.
Bloomberg notes that of the five models that are named in the memo, only the Fusion has made year-to-date gains in sales.
Merkle reiterates that the program is not “intended to just target vehicles that are down in sales,” but rather that it is intended to give dealers more means to work with customers.
News Source: Bloomberg
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