Kia Is On A Roll In The U.S.: 18 Consecutive Years Of Market Share Gains

It scarcely seems possible, but Kia said recently that at the end of 2012 Kia had 18 consecutive years of market share growth in the United States.

“Ah, that’s my favorite slide,” said Tom Loveless, executive vice president of sales, during a recent press presentation, when he got to the market share streak. That streak goes back to Kia’s U.S. debut, in 1994. Kia Motors America is based in Irvine, Calif.

Granted, Kia started out small. Sales in 1994 were only 692 cars, according to Automotive News. Kia broke 100,000 units in 1999; 200,000 units only two years later, in 2001; 300,000 in 2007, according to the Automotive News Data Center.

In 2012, the Kia brand topped 500,000 units in the U.S. market for the first time with record sales of 557,599. That beat Kia’s record set the previous year by 15 percent, in a total U.S. market that gained 13 percent overall.

“Any time you can grow share in a growing industry that’s certainly a good sign,” Loveless said.
The new Kia record in 2012 put the South Korean brand ahead of the Dodge, Jeep and Volkswagen brands. The only brands that outsold Kia in the United States last year were Ford, Chevrolet, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, and sister division Hyundai, in that order. South Korea’s Hyundai Group controls both Hyundai and Kia.

Kia executives say that U.S. sales really went into high gear starting with the launch of the Kia Soul small hatchback in 2009. The Kia Soul was the first in a string of new models marked by what Kia calls a “design-led transformation.”

The short version is that distinctive designs stand out in a crowd and provide brand identity. Not incidentally, more attractive designs also convey a higher level of quality, durability and reliability – something Kia’s brand reputation sorely lacked before the latest product generation started arriving. Eye-catching marketing, including an unexpected hit, the Kia Hamsters, also helped.

Less obvious to customers, behind the scenes Kia and Hyundai more closely integrated their product lineups to save development costs. They also built flexible factories in the United States that can produce models for either brand, to meet shifting customer demand.

For example, the Kia Sorento gets almost an entire redesign this year for the 2014 model year after only a little more than three years on the market, because its close cousin under the skin, the Hyundai Santa Fe, got a total redesign for 2013 and it didn’t make sense to keep building the two models on two different platforms. That’s a really fast pace for new-product introductions.

Ralph Tjoa, national manager, car product planning, said the Kia Forte also gets a complete redesign this year after only about 3½ years on the market. He said, “We’ve replaced the Forte twice, within the current generation of the Toyota Corolla.”

Courtesy of Forbes.