It may be recalled that when Maruti showcased the production model of the Kizashi at the 10th Auto Expo in January 2010, many automobile experts questioned the ability of the company to take on rivals of the likes of Honda Accord and Toyota Corolla Altis. Now that the model is here in the country and positioned as a luxury sports sedan, it brings to the fore a question on the direction where Maruti Suzuki, the nation’s largest automaker, wishes to go towards, especially as neither Honda, nor Toyota or even the other competitors seem to be backing off one bit from the competitive arena.
My decision to analyse Kizashi’s marketing mix did not emanate from my personal orientation towards the Kizashi (well, I simply love the Kizashi), but from a combination of various other factors – starting from the paradoxical positioning (when Maruti made it clear at the launch itself that it was not aiming at huge volumes with Kizashi; but was rather working on making it a future-ready product) to the fact that the Kizashi might be just a tool to up-position Maruti’s brand profile, much like the ‘business class’ pitted against the ‘economy’ passengers. Yet, Shinzo Nakanishi, MD & CEO, Maruti Suzuki India, has from the start been quite affirmative in his strategic intent – “The Kizashi is a very important step forward for Maruti Suzuki. It will be for the top-end customers in the Indian market and we are fully geared up to delight the customers in a segment where we have been absent so far,” he had said during the launch. Still, the Kizashi issue is quite critical at this juncture for Maruti Suzuki, mainly because wishing away a considerable part of one’s marketing budget to promote a product that is not expected to give numbers, is quite a big ask. And my journey in the past few weeks within Maruti Suzuki’s various echelons of management only succeeded in throwing up more tactical paradigms.
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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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