BMWUSA.com Website Analysis: A Pathos- and Logos-Driven Approach to Luxury Car Sales, Exams of Creative writing

Download BMWUSA.com Website Analysis: A Pathos- and Logos-Driven Approach to Luxury Car Sales and more Exams Creative writing in PDF only on Docsity! Leon Kung Writ 2E 01/28/2007 James Ford Website Analysis – BMWUSA.com Introduction BMW, one of the world’s luxury car leaders, stands for Bavarian Motor Works. It is an independent German luxury car company that sells automobiles and motorcycles. So far it is the best selling German automobile company in United States, due to its superior performance and handling. BMW was the first automaker to come up with the sport sedan. From comparisons of major automobile magazines, all of its cars have superior handling and performance to those of other luxury auto makers. For example, its 3 series has been Car and Driver “Ten Best Cars” for the 15 years straight. It has the slogan “The Ultimate Driving Machine” in the United States. From the slogan we know that BMW strives to make the best cars. All of these attribute to BMW’s high ethos. Audience and Purpose The primary audience would be the middle-upper to upper-class adults that are financially able to afford a luxury car. From the observation of BMWUSA.com, it uses the highest technology to present its cars to the customer. The whole website uses flash for every single link and picture. It is very user friendly, for instance, whenever you move the cursor over a link a drop-down menu appears. So it is very easy for the consumers to navigate the website then they will have better chance of selling its cars. BMW built their website using the most advanced technology such as flash for the middle-upper class people. Because only this class of people are most likely to be able to see all the flash images on BMWUSA.com. They apparently ignored the fact that there are still quite some people don’t have a computer or don’t have computer that is able to handle flash images. But since their targeted group is the middle upper and upper class people, so it does not really matter to them. Pathos The website shows a lot of pathos, the sensory details. BMW puts the flash picture of its newest car in the middle to make you click on the link. The image of the car is the new 3 Series hard-top twin turbo convertible. Because the picture is flash, the car is showing the motion of the hard-top convertible top retracting. From the side, the 3 Series convertible looks very sporty, luxurious and sleek. It looks so attractive that it makes you want to click on the link to find out more information about the car such as, what its hood and taillights look like. Logos BMW also demonstrates logos, through the logical design in its website. Overall the website is very organized with lots of user friendly features and flash pictures. The different organized tabs make the website look professional which leads you to believe that it is a luxury automobile company from the first sight. The flashes are logical to the customers what a decent luxury automobile company should look like. Ethos The overall ethos of the BMWUSA.com is made up from the pathos and the logos on the homepage. The logos of the professional looking homepage raises the ethos of BMW. Also its pathos of the appealing flashes makes customers feel that they want to have one of the BMW vehicles. The navigation bar is able to show all the different links, so that customers would be able to easily to browse through all the automobiles offered with all the important issues customers care the most such as maintenance, finances and etc. All these customer friendly features also contribute to its overall ethos. One of the downsides of the website is that BMW uses the latest technology on its website. So people who own an older computer, do not have a computer, or people that are sight impaired are not able to browse the BMW website. But apparently BMW does not really worry about those customers since its targeted customers are middle-upper to upper class people. Overall BMWUSA.com shows high ethos and represents the luxury segment of the automobiles. Flashes As mentioned, BMW uses flash on almost everything on its homepage. These flashes make the website’s homepage looks very attractive. They made you want to further explore in the website about the models and the benefits of buying a BMW. In the center of the webpage, there is the new 3 series hard-top convertible. On the top of the homepage, there are many tabs, that a drop down menu would show when you put your cursor on them. At the bottom, there are four interactive pictures titled “Build Your BMW”, “Test Drive”, “Special Lease Offer” and “BMW Ultimate Services”. Overall the flashes images raise the ethos of BMW, they make BMWUSA.com look very advanced and nice. Navigation