CASE #5 easyCar.com
Summary
Easycar, rental car company, founded in 2000 on a £10million investment, has grown car rental business. Easycar was a member of the EasyGroup family of companies. Easycar’s differ from traditional rental care companies. They don’t work with intermediaries and started its business with only one vehicle, Mercedes A-class, while all most competitors rented various vehicles. In addition, they provide lower price to customers than their competitors and have several price policies such as returning its car by cleaning from customer, booking service on the website and phone reservation system, small place for parking, and so on.
The western European rental car industry consisted of many different national markets that were only semi-integrated. While there were many companies that competed within this European rental car industry, a handful of companies held dominant positions, either across a number of national markets or within one or a few national markets. There were several international companies, Avis, Eurocar, and Hertz, as well as many smaller rental companies operating in this market. Many of these smaller companies operated at only one or a few locations, and were particularly prevalent in tourist locations. There were also a number of brokers operating in the sector, like Holiday Autos. Brokerage companies did not own their own fleet of cars but basically managed the excess inventory of other companies and matched customers with rental companies with excess fleet capacity. The rental car market could be thought of as composed of two board segment: a business and a tourist segment. The business segment is lower than the tourist segment, so it was less price sensitive than the tourist segment and more concerned about service ...