Product-Line Variety And Innovation Along Product Life-Cycle In Car Market: Are Carmakers? Policies Really Effective?

This paper presents some preliminary results of a research concerning the evolution of product variety and product innovation policies of carmakers in the European market. Three market segments are taken into consideration for the period 1984-2004; data concerning model sales and product characteristics of some of the main carmakers are examined and the aspects taken into consideration refers to Product Life-Cycle (PLC), price positioning, rough measures of Product Line Width (PLW) and Product Line Innovation (PLI).