Company Profile and Environmental Dimension
Chrysler Corporation is the smallest of the traditional Detroit "Big Three" automobile manufacturers, after General Motors and Ford. As of 1994, Chrysler commanded slightly less than ten percent of the U.S. domestic automobile market, selling 812,000 of the 8,990,000 cars sold in the United States that year. Its relative position in the small-truck market is stronger; in 1994 Chrysler held about a fifth of that market, selling 1,392,000 vehicles out of a total of 6,420,000 sold.
It should be noted that the "truck" market includes minivans, a class of vehicle which Chrysler pioneered in the 1980s. In functional terms, these vehicles are most nearly the descendants of the "station wagons" of an earlier period in the history of the American automotive market. Likewise, most small pickup trucks today are sold as consumer vehicles, not commercial vehicles.
What stands out in the above market figures is that sixty-three percent of Chrysler production is of vehicles other than automobiles as narrowly defined, and that its market share in the market for such "non-car cars" is twice as great as its share of the market for cars in the strict sense. This pattern of sales will be examined and discussed more extensively below. It is worth noting at the outset, however, that Chrysler has in some sense defined itself as focusing upon the market for what might be called alternative personal transportation vehicles.
Chrysler Corporation has had a somewhat checkered history, and as the smallest of the domestic American Big Three, it occupies a potentially precarious position in the current marketplace. In the 1940s and 1950s, Chrysler sought to save money by avoiding annual model changes, but paid the price in shrunken market share, dropping to the number three position among US automakers. In the 1960s it tried to introduce smaller cars when American consumers were not yet ready for ...