Mercedes pledges sales growth without discounts

Daimler AG, the world's second- largest maker of luxury cars, intends to grab market share from competitors this year by focusing on new Mercedes-Benz models and cleaner technology rather than discounts.

Mercedes-Benz Cars is targeting a "high single-digit" percentage increase in deliveries in the first quarter and will outpace global auto market growth of 3 percent to 4 percent in 2010, Joachim Schmidt, the division's executive vice president of sales and marketing, said in a phone interview. The brand aims to maintain its price premium and scale back special offers to consumers, he said.

"We won't buy market share by reducing the value of our product with incentives," Schmidt said yesterday.

Mercedes is working to close the sales gap with luxury leader Bayerische Motoren Werke AG while fending off Volkswagen AG's Audi brand, which seeks to become the world's top high-end car manufacturer by 2015. Daimler will present a prototype diesel-electric hybrid of the Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan at the Geneva International Motor Show, which opens on March 4, as part of an effort to catch up with BMW in green technology.

U.S. buyers of Mercedes-Benz cars and sport-utility vehicles in January received an average $3,077 in rebates and discount financing, about 35 percent less than a year earlier, according to data from the Edmunds.com automotive-retailing Web site. That was nearly double the average $1,655 incentive offered by Audi, while lower than the $4,924 given by BMW.

'Intensely Competitive'

"We have a very intensely competitive market, but our strategy is to have a premium price to our competitors," said Schmidt. "We want to be able to offer our customers the best value retention in the industry, so when in doubt, I'd rather sell one car too few than offer a utopian incentive."

In Germany, Mercedes-Benz's rebates averaged 10.2 percent off the list price in January, matching the figure at Audi, according to data from the Autohaus PulsSchlag trade publication, which doesn't have numbers for BMW.