Poland Provides the Best Opportunity for Fuel Card Market Penetration

As many of Europe's commercial fuel card markets reach saturation point there is a need to identify untapped investment potential. This briefly highlights the markets and segments offering the greatest opportunity for fuel card business growth and examines customer attitudes towards card usage, the key competitive obstacles and provides suggestions on how they can be overcome.

This report gives a comprehensive overview of fuel card volume sales, market value, network penetration and brand awareness across 18 European countries, while giving an understanding of fleet manager attitudes towards fuel cards, contact channels and providers customer service performance.

It also makes a quantitative comparison of the competitive dynamics that currently drive Europe's five key untapped fuel card markets and carries out an in-depth assessment of the obstacles to successful entry that exist in the main fuel card markets and proposes practical suggestions on how to surpass them.

The main highlights of this title are:

-- Europe's fuel card market has genuine untapped potential. The regional fuel card market was worth EUR 56 billion in 2004, 54% of which was concentrated in countries where commercial oil card volumes accounted for less than a fifth of national fuel sales.

-- Former state incumbents provide a notable barrier to new entrants. With a 40% acceptance rate across all Spain's petrol stations, Repsols card network coverage is over two times larger than nearest rival Cepsa. Repsol also has the lions share of the Spanish oil card market with a 60% volume share.

-- Poland provides the best opportunity for fuel card market penetration. Uncertainty surrounding the quality of PKN Orlens fuel card customer service provides an opportunity for new entrants and existing providers to challenge its dominance. Some 36% Polish managers could not name the best card provider in their market.

This title allows you to evaluate Europe's commercial fuel cards markets by volume and sales value whilst identifying those with the greatest untapped potential. It also enables you to identify potential barriers to operating successfully in key fuel cards markets and establish appropriate strategies to overcome them, whilst gaining insight into the European competitive landscape including sector concentration and average network coverage of the major oil card providers.

Other points mentioned throughout this report are:

-- Poland's fuel card market has the greatest untapped potential, but time is of the essence

-- Quality customer service is the key to unlocking Poland's potential

-- Uncertainty over the merits of PKNs fuel card provision provides an opportunity

-- Successful entry into Poland could be achieved via telecoms channels

-- The Repsol brand represents a formidable barrier to entry into Iberia

-- Any attempt to compete with Repsol in Iberia must be on the basis of customer service

-- Successful entry into Spain and Portugal would require people on the ground

-- The majority of Iberian fleet managers have not been approached by a fuel card provider

-- Supermarket strength undermines the potential to develop a fleet fuel card proposition in France

-- Untapped potential in Italy's fuel market is limited by a wider averseness to commercial card use

-- An all round package is key to being a successful European fuel card provider

-- Shell and BP provide a large obstacle to any provider looking to enter Europe's fuel card market

-- A significant proportion of non-fuel card users perceive their company to be too small to benefit from using a provider

-- Europes EUR 56 billion fuel card market has untapped potential

For more information visit (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c38351)

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