Customers

Group companies
"pursue market excellence and competitiveness, offering customers a quality of service that effectively meets their requirements" and also "base the excellence of the Group's products and services on customer service and the readiness to meet customer needs. The aim is to offer immediate, thoroughgoing and competent responses, tailored to the needs of customers, and in keeping with the spirit of legality, courtesy and co-operation. ( Ethical Code , Articles 2 and 4).

Sales broken down into different geographical areas

	% on total sales value
Geographical Area	Year 2007	Year 2006	Year 2005
Italy	24%	27%	32%
Rest of Europe	34%	33%	36%
North America	6%	7%	7%
Latin America	23%	21%	17%
Australia, Africa, Asia	13%	12%	8%

Customer orientation implies a constant and ongoing commitment from Pirelli in terms of:
- understanding the market context in which the Group operates and the impact of the one's actions and behaviour on the customer;
- researching and developing extremely innovative products and services that are both high quality and ensure increasing levels of safety for the consumer and respect for our environment;
- exploiting every opportunity in doing business in order to satisfy the customer's needs.

Indeed, the company's approach has been recognized internationally, with Pirelli being among the world's 100 most respected, most reliable companies according to the Reputation Institute of New York based on the 2008 edition of "The Global Pulse Project". This special classification ranks over a thousand companies in 27 nations based on an index that measures the level of the public's trust, admiration, esteem, and respect. The annual survey involves interviews with more that 30,000 consumers, and the results of the study are published each year by Forbes.
 
Customer safety is a part of the genetic makeup of the following Pirelli Tyre products, for example:
the new Pirelli Cinturato, whose innovation integrates driver safety and the reduction of environmental impacts; K-PRESSURE™, an innovative safety device capable of detecting whether the pressure of the tyre is correct or below the alert threshold and to warn the driver in real time through an on board alarm; self-supporting or run flat tyres, which provide greater vehicle control in emergency conditions and allow continued safe driving even during a rapid loss of inflation pressure; specialist tyres for new types of vehicles and new uses, for example Winter UHP tyres for ultra-high performance supercars for mixed road/track use; new concept tyres like the new P ZERO launched in February 2007 that, thanks to its special tread compound, offers the extreme performance of a warm tyre from a "cold" start. SWS™, the first self-inflating tyre; the Cyber™Tyre System, a tyre "memory", through which a car's onboard computer communicates information about the operational condition of the cover in real time; and the Cyber™Wheel System, to use the rim as a sensor to detect physical sizes and transmit them to the car.

Respect for the environment, in turn, is a concept found in all Pirelli products, from the "New Pirelli Cinturato" to Pirelli Real Estate's eco-building and including solutions for sustainable development in the Environment segment (such as GECAM™, White Diesel, Feelpure™ particulate filters, and CDR-Q).

Also of note is Pirelli's institutional commitment to increasing the attention paid by drivers to tyres - and therefore to their safety, through specific institutional campaigns. Of particular note is Pirelli's role within the ETRMA, whose Chairman is the CEO and Managing Director of Pirelli Tyre, who was responsible for the signing of the European Road Safety Charter on 27 April 2007 in Brussels. The charter is a part of the European Commission objective to reduce by half the number of roadway fatalities by 2010.