My post in ISTT in a reference to a case study of an auto company's marketing programmes:

Often marketing incentives seek to right a symptom and not a
disease :-) and are quik fix solutions.
More data would needed to be taken before one can propose a solution
to this case (thanks for posting this, by the way)

The company needs to ask itself:

1. How much is it in tune with the customer? Is it relying on
marketing 'research' for its data or does it rely on mining first
hand 'insight'

2. How does the customer percieve the product? When such schemes are
launched they inadverdently give off messages to the customer
saying "we are desperate" "our prices were way too much" and "we
have been ripping you in the past"...how would these messages impact
them vis-a-vis the perceptions of the competition.

3. How intergrated is the rest of the organization to the marketing
and sales group? Is the success seen as only the M&S team's success
or the organizations success?

4. Is the marketing team looking for own personal incentives which
could be counter-productive to the organization? How are reward
systems linked to overall performance of the initiative?

5. How much strategy alignment occurs when strategy is communicated?
Is it just a 'telling' process or is it a 'co-evolved and co-owned'
process?