Carmakers’ current strategic circumstances, whose drum beat loudly all throughout the 2006 Paris Automobile Salon, has once again led to demand for the sort of analysis which, in view of the role that this industry plays and the uses associated with it, would appear to legitimise active research on such questions. There is a natural temptation for anyone (including researchers like ourselves) witnessing these new phases in the automobile industry’s history to seek solutions that will enable all actors to overcome the kinds of problems caused both by the saturation of mature markets and by the chaotic expansion of emerging markets.

For GERPISA, whose DNA abounds with the need to continually engage with the sorts of issues that become an object of widespread public and media debate, a context of this ilk is destined to become a dual source of dynamism. Our past work has given us the legitimacy to participate in this debate and to prevent media discourse from being monopolised by so-called experts who are all the more willing to preach their “truths” because since they function in blissful ignorance of the complexity of the questions, and the variety of the responses, that the automobile’s history offers us. Our frequent media appearances have therefore been a cause for some initial satisfaction. Looking towards the future, we note that the questions expressed by the concept of “social demand” are both novel and likely to be treated by means of a method whose validity has been proven by GERPISA.

The real issue here is the changing context in which manufacturers try to define and find outlets for the products they offer. The history of the automobile, as indicated in many GERPISA studies, teaches us that changes of this kind will be interpreted and integrated in different ways by different firms. Even if some succeed their adaptation drive better than others do, this does not Necessarily mean that all practices will align with the best ones. In other words, our ongoing and in vivo work on these mutations, illuminated as always by a re-examination of history, will attempt to identify (based on what we think we know about firms’ previous history) renewed modes for the profit strategy definitions and product policies that are in the process of being written.

For this reason, and now more than ever, we will need to qualify the contexts and above all gain a deeper understanding of the forms that automobile demands can assume in industrialised and/or emerging countries. This seems to be key to understanding the highly unequal distribution of carmakers’ ostensible aptitudes for (re)discovering the outlets they need but without having to discount their products.

Amongst the other questions raised during the Salon, some very stimulating remarks were made by Patrick Blain, Renault’s Deputy MD for Trade, who expects a bi-modal demand in Europe with some vehicles retailing for €40,000 and others for less than €10,000. These two “dynamic segments” will cause “generalists” a few serious problems. Similarly, in the emerging markets, PSA’s example shows that questions pertaining to the conditions in which old platforms are given a new life through the design of adapted product ranges hark back, in other forms, to problems of a similar nature. This bolsters our belief that turning this dimension into one our major foci might not only be stimulating intellectually but also create a certain resonance amongst a number of major actors.