市场学ComprehensiveCase2.doc

Comprehensive Case 2 Enterprise Rent-A-Car: Selling the Dream In the Fast Lane On a bright January 1998 morning, Dean Pittman, Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s area rental manager for Durham/Chapel Hill, North Carolina, got out of his Dodge Intrepid at Enterprise’s new office in Durham. He admired the line of clean cars and the new office with its green and white Enterprise sign. To Dean, it seemed that dreams really did come true. A little over six years ago, Dean had graduated with a degree in industrial relations from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. When he’d first scheduled a job interview with Enterprise, Dean had been skeptical. Although he didn’t know much about the company, he wasn’t certain that he’d like renting cars for a living or working a retail job that included washing cars. But he’s seen the potential to advance quickly, to develop strong management skills, and to learn about running a business. Once hired, Dean had been promoted quickly to management assistant, then to branch manager at Enterprise’s new office in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. A year age, Enterprise had made him an area manager, giving him responsibility for the Durham/Chapel Hill area – supervising three branch offices with 22 employees, 495 cars, and annual revenues of more than $3 million. Dean felt as though he was running his own business. Enterprise gave its managers considerable autonomy and paid them based on a percentage of their branches’ profits. Eean’s starting salary had been in line with those of his classmates, but within three years his pay had doubled, and now it had tripled. There couldn’t be many other companies, Dean thought, in which a person his age could have so much responsibility, so such fun, and such high earnings. Company Background Dean’s good fortune mirrored that of Enterprise itself. The company’s founder Jack Taylor started Enterprise in 1962 with a single location and 17 cars in St. Louis, Missouri. Since then, Enterprise had grown dramatical