When it was announced in 2005, the Tata Nano was touted as the dream of millions of aspiring car owners and the nightmare of environmentalists and city planners. Instead, Nano’s dwindling sales are giving sleepless nights to Tata Motors executives. Why has the price-sensitive Indian stayed away from an automobile custom-made for him?
I got the answer from my wife. When I expressed my desire to buy the Nano, she cringed at the thought of being seen by her friends in a Nano. And this repartee from a middle class woman, who doesn’t mind being seen bargaining for apparel on the Linking Road.
The Nano seems to have lost the plot while positioning the car. Right from the word go, Tata Motors positioned it solely as an economical car. How else would you explain why the Nano sold only 509 units in November 2010 as against 32,377 Maruti Altos in the same period (The cheapest car in India after the Nano, around Rs 2.5 lakh). The consumer connect was missing. The consumer doesn’t mind buying an economical car, but he wouldn’t like to be branded as ‘cheap’.
The promotional strategy was also erroneous. The Nano was promoted through a social media campaign! Would the family delicately perched on a scooter be expected to open a Facebook account and get a Twitter handle? They would be happy to see the Nano being promoted in perhaps the only shopping mall in their small town. Or in the vicinity of the vegetable market, railway station, petrol pump, a tractor showroom. And the urbanites active on the social media wouldn’t want to be seen driving a Nano. So, it was clearly a case of looking East and heading West.
The missing connect also might explain why the Nano’s sales declined after the media flashed images of a Nano up-in-flames. Why didn’t people give up drinking cola even after they found pesticides, gutka packets and chaddi naadas in their bottles?
For a car meant for the masses, it was hardly a good idea to sell it through a lottery. Out of the 2,00,000 initial bookings, only 1,00,000 ‘lucky’ customers would get the Nano. Ultimately, only 77,000 of these drove home in the lakhtakiya car. This gave an impression that the waiting period for Nano is too long.
The overconfidence of Tata Motors executives is largely to blame. They thought that the Nano would sell only because it was ‘the Nano’. The company hardly took any efforts to market the product, until three weeks back when it came out with the television campaign. This should have been done at the cusp of the launch, and minus the ‘economical car’ badge.
Still, all is not lost yet. The Nano still has the potential to be a game-changer. Remember, it costs half its nearest competitor. With a little more marketing pizzazz, it can still find the key to happiness. And when it does that, I will be happy to buy it in a Rs 1.25 lakh straight down payment.
