How successful will be the penetration of Tata Small Car

We are waiting desperately for the small car from Tata's stable even under the constant politically vitiated business environment of West Bengal.

Questions that come to our mind - What will be the success prospects of this new small car. Will it be able to create its own position? How will people perceive it - a real alternate to bikes? Will it be able to meet the aspirations of Tata?

Let us first try to understand market. This Car is being positioned towards customers who are currently using bikes and cannot afford a 4-wheeler. Hence it is a step through. It means it is not going to address the "esteem needs" of the people. It is only going to address the "utility needs".

Hence people can never use this car as a status symbol. On the worst side, it will tag the user as a "better poor".

Let us see the bike users. One big segment is that of yuppies, young, stylish, macho image projectors, willing to flaunt their mobiles and girl friends. Will they be interested in picking "Poorman's Car".

Now there are other users of bikes as well who are needing it for "Transportation Needs" and "Safety Needs" to save their lives on unruly roads. They are the target customers. But how will this Car penetrate this market. This segment is having clear-cut need, however this segment is not going to accept any "technically incompetent" product.

This segment is exposed to the finest technology in terms of Japanese Bikes and anything that does not come up to their expectations is going to suffer. Tatas have history of launching products which are rarely technically competent (ACE is an exception).

Further product life cycle concepts says that the penetration levels are poor when the new product is launched. It does not require tremendous advertising. It requires good "word-of-mouth". Will Small Car get that word-of-mouth.

Remember, we rarely praise things and we are fond of criticizing and when we have a product which does not fulfill our "Esteem Needs", we tend to criticize that more.

If price is the only USP, why Maruti's M-800 is fairing so badly in the market.

We will discuss more on this Car. We will see what are the expectations of Tata with it and how this will fare on that.

Esteem going out of Maruti stable

8 months back I predicted that the worst sufferer in C-segment cars will be Maruti Esteem. Yesterday this has been announced officially by Maruti that Esteem will be discontinued soon.

My argument was that due to the launch of Logan at a very competitive price and further poor advertising from Maruti (always trying to explain what is the meaning of esteem, as if the customers are extremely illiterate)resulted in the dismal performance.

It was also discussed that another brand could suffer because of this and that was Indigo. From last more than six-months, Indigo is seeing its share falling downwards i.e. mainly due to the poor quality.

However Maruti was less affected due to its strategy of giving moving target to its competitors (a moving target is always difficult to hit). By the time Esteem is faring badly in the market, Swift and SX4 have established themselves and further there are plans to launch sedan version of Swift in Petrol and Diesel as well.

Let us see how Tata's are going to regain its lost glory. If DICOR could be an answer.