GM promotions won't affect 2005 industry sales

While the “Employee Discount for Everyone” promotion has yielded big sales numbers for GM in the month of June and influenced both Ford and DaimlerChrysler to offer similar promotions, according to CSM worldwide, an auto industry research firm, these incentives will not boost total industry sales for 2005. The firm seems to think the incentives will just shift sales that would have occurred later in the year to this summer. The report does note that the intent of the incentives is to reduce dramatically high inventory levels, which they have. They have not, however, made GM any money as the automaker just posted a first quarter loss of $1.1 billion compared with last year’s first quarter profit of $1.2 billion.

By John Neff
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While the “Employee Discount for Everyone” promotion has yielded big sales numbers for GM in the month of June and
influenced both Ford and DaimlerChrysler to offer similar promotions, according to CSM worldwide, an auto industry
research firm, these incentives will not boost total industry sales for 2005. The firm seems to think the incentives
will just shift sales that would have occurred later in the year to this summer. The report does note that the intent
of the incentives is to reduce dramatically high inventory levels, which they have. They have not, however, made GM any
money
as the automaker just posted a first quarter loss of $1.1 billion compared with last year’s first quarter profit of
$1.2 billion.