TATA ‘NANO’

A statement by Cyrus Mistry: “Tata Nano to be souped up, positioned as smart city car”

News about Tata Nano:

 

“We are now focusing on increasing the features and the perceived value of the Nano with every subsequent model launch and targeting the young customers”, Tata Group Chairman Cyrus P Mistry told.
Despite discounts and other freebies, Tata Motors has not been able to draw in customers to Nano showrooms and its dedicated Nano plant at Sanand in Gujarat is running much below even half its capacity.
Market share of Tata Motors dived to 8.9 per cent in July in the passenger car space, from 11.8 per cent in March.                                (21 Aug, 2013)

Although Tata ‘nano’ – the lowest-priced car in India and the dream-car of Ratan Tata, was launched with the motive and expectation to revolutionize the Indian car market, the product could not become a successful brand. The Tata Motors kept on changing its ‘positioning statements’ but in vain. In 2013, the positioning statement was changed for the third time in addition to hiring a fashion designer to make cosmetic changes in the colour-appearance of ‘nano’. Her arguments actually failed to convince the buyers to buy ‘nano’ – despite promotional advertising campaigns on TV media. 

The Core problem of Tata Motors’ Nano car is the lack of ‘Sharp Positioning’ for Nano. “Aapki khushiyon ki chaabi” became ‘na-no’ or ‘No-No’ by buyers! Now in 2013, Tata Motors is trying to re-position ‘nano’ with ‘Celebrate Awesomeness’ promotional tag.

Tata began as a steel manufacturing company (TISCO) in early 20^th century.  Later on, TELCO-Jamshedpur started manufacturing commercial trucks. Then in 1999, TELCO branched out to become Tata Motors by launching its first car named “indica” — thinking that when they can sell trucks and buses, they can sell passenger cars too! Tata Motors became a ‘generalist’ of all automobile categories by launching passenger cars in various segments! TELCO is a ‘specialist’ of trucks & buses particularly in entire Northern India, but TM is nowhere a Specialist of cars. Further, the entire Tata Group has become the best example of ‘Jack of All Trades’— starting from steel and truck to salt, software and now pulses or ‘Daal’ in Hindi (Tata i-Shakti– a brand name copied on the lines of Apple’s iPhone). Have you ever seen the car market’s world leaders in Germany (Mercedes, BMW), Japan (Toyota, Honda) or USA (Ford, General Motors) also manufacturing and selling Salt, Detergent, Beverages and similar FMCG products extending the same brand name (Tata) in each and every category? Nobody has ever heard of or seen ‘Toyota Tea’ like Tata Tea, ‘Honda-Salt’ like Tata Salt, ‘BMW-Sky’ like Tata Sky, ‘Mercedes-indicom’ like Tata-indicom and so forth!! Tata’s desire to extend its brand name in every category is the root cause creating problems in brand management, services and focus. 

The ‘Jack of All Trades’ is the ‘Master of None’. Despite having numerous businesses in perhaps a wild number of ‘Categories’, Tata could not attain a place so far in world’s top 100 brands. Not only this, the entire Tata group’s turnover is less than Reliance’s – leave aside the top 10 Global Brands such as Apple, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, GE, and Toyota! 

Had Tata Motors created a very different ‘category’ (other than ‘car’) before launching ‘Nano’, it would have perhaps succeeded in positioning ‘nano’ as a successful brand in a well-defined target segment. Instead, TM made a marketing mistake to keep ‘nano’ in the same category of ‘Car’ like other Tata cars such as ‘Indica’, ‘Indigo’, ‘Manza’, etc. Merely doing cosmetic changes, adding features (4-year long warranty, awesome colours & funky designs) or coming out with CNG variant would hardly make any difference – except perhaps raising the frustration level of the marketing & sales department of ‘nano’.

~Gunjan Gupta, Esq.