Marketing Automotive

The Indian automaker, is seeking to boost sales of its Nano “minicar” by selling it through the stores of discount retail chain Big Bazaar.

The company started the case as a pilot project to see whether a car can actually be sold through a hypermarket. A company spokeperson told : “So far, it has lived up to the expectations.” More specifically, Big Bazaar has sold 450 units to date, or 5% of the total 8,262 Nano purchases made by Indian consumers across February 2011.

Big Bazaar discount stores is a concept appealing to the masses and there is a lot of commonality between Big Bazaar consumers and prospective Nano buyers. Big Bazaar’s customers, mostly value conscious people, fit in the profile of Nano buyers.

This new approach marks the latest evolution of Tata’s efforts to stimulate demand for the Nano after sales hit just 509 vehicles in November 2010. It has begun using an increasingly diverse range of alternative vendors, as well as kiosks, to engage potential customers in different settings than car forecourts, and also offers several financial plans.

Indian automotive experts think that Tata Motors may have realised that for a product like Nano, conventional distribution systems such as car showrooms can only help to an extent.

Automakers are saying they will likely be back online by later this week. Toyota is the only automaker in Japan with major manufacturing operations in the northern region of Japan, which is closest to the offshore epicenter of the quake.

For the time being Toyota closed three factories, and Honda Motor Co. has also suspended production, which could affect exports.

The biggest earthquake-related production losses are likely to be at Toyota’s plants near the epicenter: the brand-new plant in Miyagi Prefecture, which makes the Yaris and has a 120,000 unit-per-year capacity. There are also Toyota-owned parts makers there.

Toyota says it has already restarted its plants in Hokkaido, Tohoku, the Miyagi Plant, and its Kanto Auto Works Iwate Plant.

Honda reportedly lost two employees at its Tochigi factory, Kanto region, near Utsunomiya. The company’s 48-year-old Sayama plant, closer to the epicenter, has reportedly remained shut down, and Honda headquarters had trouble contacting its plants. Reportedly, 30 people were hurt and one killed when the facility’s cafeteria wall collapsed.

Nissan says its global headquarters building in Yokohama was not significantly affected. The automaker says small fires broke out at the Tochigi Plant and the Iwaki Plant casting facilities but have been extinguished, and two employees at Tochigi Plant suffered minor injuries. However, the Nissan Oppama plant was reportedly affected, and that factory is where Nissan makes its new electric car, the Leaf.

Suzuki Motor Corporation reported it has suffered no damage to headquarters or manufacturing plants located in the Shizuoka Prefecture region; the earthquake’s epicenter was 240 miles north of Tokyo and Suzuki’s headquarters are in Hamamatsu City, which is 158 miles south of the city.

Ford Motors headquarters in Dearborn (MLichigan, USA) will look to international markets and tap in to consumers’ fuel economy concerns in a new global ad campaign for its Focus model, in an attempt to boost sales even as oil prices rise.

Ford’s WPP agency  developped a single campaign that will be rolled out worldwide.

“The last time we launched a car, we had eight campaigns,” James D Farley, Ford group vice president for global marketing, sales and service, said at a news conference.

Ads in traditional media, including TV spots and newspaper and magazine ads, will share a similar “look”, reflecting the Focus’ repositioning as a “world car”. Ford hopes that the range’s smaller sizes – and the fact that some of the models will be hybrid and electric cars – will be a selling point in a world of rising fuel prices.

The Focus’ fuel economy will be highlighted in some of the ads – as will the possibility for customers to add on fuel-saving technology that automatically cuts out the engine when the car stops.

BMW will launch a sub-brand for a new line of electric cars in 2013.

The German automaker unveiled a tagline (“Born Electric”) and the slanted “i” logo that will be the official mark of it electric vehicle arm, with designs for two of its planned models highlighted today.

The i3 is a four-seat, battery powered city car, while the i8 is a plug-in hybrid sports car that the company promises “will be able to reach 60 miles an hour, or nearly 100 kilometers an hour, in five seconds, while burning no more fuel than a subcompact.” The products and services have been conceived around a revolutionary approach: purpose designed and purpose built for sustainable, premium mobility. In terms of design, the i-branded plug-in cars will retain BMW’s distinctive kidney-shaped grill design on the front end, even though the “grill” is not needed by a battery-powered vehicle and would be purely decorative. Their wheels “will be narrower and taller than conventional cars, with body elements that wrap around the front and back of each tire for better aerodynamics. In addition to being design-conscious, BMW’s electric cars will aim to be electronically advanced and hyper-connected. To spur their smartcar abilities, the carmaker also announced that it had formed a New York-based venture capital fund to develop mobile apps.

BMW is striving for minimum weight and maximum aerodynamic efficiency to help compensate for the limited driving range inherent to battery-powered cars.”

The Nano is the world’s cheapest everyday car. It is a fuel-efficient, $2,500 four-seater that the company plans to export to Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.

In fact the car is the result of an unlikely — but public — promise that Ratan Tata, the company’s leader, made in 2003, setting to work a team of engineers charged with rethinking how cars could be designed and made. The result, which went on sale in 2009 lis the a tiny, two-cylinder model that gets 55 miles per gallon and meets all of India’s vehicle emissions and regulatory requirements.

The car, which costs about half as much as the next-cheapest Indian car, has caused a worldwide stir since its launch.

The Nano, came about because the leader of the Tata Group (*), Ratan Tata, wanted to build a four-wheeled vehicle to compete with the country’s ubiquitous motor scooters, which often transport multiple passengers despite the dangers in doing so. In an exchange with journalists before the Nano was born, Tata discussed how cheaply the company could build the car, throwing out the figure of $2,500 as an example. Though he hadn’t said definitively that would be the car’s sale price, headlines the next day trumpeted the figure. Instead of backtracking, Tata took that as a challenge whose public nature would motivate employees toward success.

Sunil Sinha, an executive in Tata Quality Management Services, told a Harvard audience on Tuesday Oct. 12, 2010 :

“If you want to innovate, take a bold challenge, make a public announcement, and it will happen” .

Years of work resulted in a low-weight, low-carbon vehicle with many innovations, Sinha said. The Nano is powered by a two-cylinder, all-aluminum engine and weighs just 1,300 pounds. It emits just 103 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer driven, compared with its nearest competitor, which emits 130 to 150 grams per kilometer. Innovations were needed all along the production chain, from parts suppliers to dealers.

(*) For those unfamiliar to the Tata Group, the Mumbai-based company Tata is a major international corporation and India’s largest company. It has subsidiaries that operate in the automotive, information technology, steel, communications, power, tea, and hospitality industries. Tata Motors not only produces the Nano, but also owns the well-known British automotive brands Land Rover and Jaguar, purchased from Ford in 2008.