For many years now Mercedes-Benz has been mostly perceived as a car brand for old money customers, not in the likes of Jaguar or other luxury British car manufacturers, but sporting a base of clients with a rather high income levels. In order to somewhat change this, the Stuttgart brand made the first small step in attracting younger buyers back in the 1980s, when the 190 (W201) “Baby Benz” was launched, allowing Mercedes-Benz to compete in a segment in which they hadn’t been active since before World War II.
After also testing the waters somewhat successfully with the first two generations of the A-Class and then with the B-Class compact MPV spin-off, Mercedes-Benz decided to expand their compact lineup to an all-out attack of various models that should appeal to younger buyers.
Based on the MFA (Modular Front-wheel drive Architecture) platform, the new A-Class (W176), B-Class (W246), CLA (C117) and GLA (X156) will soon be accompanied by the CLA Shooting Brake (X117), all models being pretty much tailored to draw in younger customers for the three-pointed star brand, along with a serious increase in sales and a lower CO2 emissions average for the entire fleet. If for some people it wasn’t obvious by now, both the new A-Class and the CLA have pretty much succeeded in both their conquest rates and in the lowering of Mercedes-Benz clients median age, and have done so in quite a spectacular manner.
For example, the Mercedes-Benz CLA has a a 80% conquest rate in North America while the GLA crossover/SUV is expected to have a global conquest rate of about 70% on its own.
With the MFA-based models being in charge of about one third of Mercedes-Benz car sales around the world, you can see how this kind of detail is pretty important for reaching younger customers and increasing the Mercedes-Benz fan base. In other words, more than half of customers of Mercedes-Benz compact models are both new to the brand and younger, and we are not even including the smart brand here, who is about to launch all-new generations of the fortwo and forfour – cars which are in theory marketed to even younger people.
