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-   -   Why has the petrol Innova bombed (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/15858-why-has-petrol-innova-bombed-2.html)

1. Not all NRIs live in the US. There are many more outside.

2. This analysis does not apply to makichoos NRIs like me. I'd still buy diesel - in India.

If Toyota wants to sell a Petrol UV, bring on the Previa.

hi guys let me tell my point of view first.

after i did my research analysis and after looking at the customer profile of all customers(Innova petrol, diesel, scorpio, tavera, city and optra) i personally felt that no point in toyota producing petrol version or even if it produces, no point in spending much of time and resources promoting it. better they can concentrate on diesel version. bcoz when you look at the Indian market, no petrol variant MPV or SUV is there in this segment. know why? its Indian consumer buying behaviour. thatz not the market here and sure toyota wont get its market share of 10%(which it is aiming for 2010) if it goes this way. scorpio intoduced petrol version and withdrew soon knowing the mkt. i think thats fine.

i feel innova cant draw volumes from PC cars the reason being many - looks, style, size, mileage, need etc...

today, mkt scenario is such that, more diesel variants are about to be introduced- from lower end(expecting swift's launch this yr end) to premium segment(audi, merc etc to plannin to launch diesel variant)

if u guys would have read my yday's mail(i told toyota in India cant gain market share unless it launches a new vehicle in upper B segment), thatz what came in today's parer too.(ET)

but as a student doing project, i'm supposed to devise a promo plan so i went ahead with it

from toyota's point,

lemme explain wat TKM wanna do

• it never defined it as car. it positioned it as "MPV+PC"
• i included that 4% also in analysis(which includes innova petrol customers too). almost 50% had gone because of "toyota" brand name. that answers why innova for them. and petrol users went coz of small distance travel, less noise, vibration compared to diesel and better pick up.
• i suggested giving basic accessories free during purchase but TKM feels that ,that will make previous customers of innova think that they were cheated by toyota

its right that innova customers are additional car owners. but i would like to contradict that slim minority have 2 cars. coz more people are buying additional cars.(growing at rate of more than 30%. i forgot the real % but i can refer to article and tell)

i havent put across all the points. but in a hurry to leave now. so i can continue tomorrow.

(PS: Bhpians, in the beginning of my mail itself, i've put my personal opinion before putting toyota's . so lemme know whether i'm right, if not correct me.

few BHPians think i'm asking the view about doing a project. well! its no. i've already done it and sharing the market scenario. (someone pointed that it was my 1st objective to join this forum). well! the answer is again no. i joined this forum to get anything and everthing possible regarding automobiles. and i'm really getting information. thank u guys:)

i did my project in A and SP dept(advt and sales promo). so i was not under Mr. Rajesh Grover. ya i agree he is the head of MR dept and when doing my proj, i was guided by some one else from that dept. and joz, may i know whether u worked in TKM before or just know him?

since i did my proj in TKM, i was able to give insights what toyota wanna do with Innova. As a automobile lover, my opinion is different. but when i'm assigned to do something, i've to make the best from toyota's angle. thatz the difference

bye for today)

Point taken. Though I was in Riyadh for some time, I have lived longer in the US. Hence the generalization on my part.

If you and I take a diesel today, we wouldn't be doing it just for the lower running costs.

I dont know how different would the Previa fare, if it were to be available in both versions. Not much, IMO.

Rekha, we could possibly move this thread to the other thread.

To increase the share of the petrol version - the one point I can think of is to identify the buyers who could have been influenced to go for the petrol version instead of the diesel version.

The other point would be to try make the Innova more attractive than the competition. More likely the Tavera, than the Sumo's, Scorpio's, Safari's.

The reason why Innova Petrol wont sell is as simple. Indians want average, the Innova D does that well. They want performance but those kind of people want handling along with the power which however hard the Innova tries to do cant simply because of its high GC and hence too much body roll. Now why would any person wanting to get from one point to another say A to B want power when they know they wont need that power. Also Diesel cars have more torque and resale.

THIS IS MY EARLIER POST AT THE OTHER THREAD
Welcome Aboard!
Interesting project too.
Innova is first three-row seating passenger car in India. It’s one of the 5 models of IMV project……
Ok ..ok lets start with the project here
The target market that it’s made to cater is something Toyota guys should redefine. Infact Innova should make effort to make its own segment. The PC and MAV segment that it’s bound to cater should expand. I am not discussing the diesel version as its segment can be bit different.
Two parts of your projects are …Firstly…why sales are dropping
Secondly ..what promotional strategies should be adopted.
Sales may be dropping because of various reasons but since marketing is our focus I will say that sales are dropping because of lack of promotion….Yes you heard me right.
The Innova marketing exercise has been through out good with “All You Desire” tag. It has a great recall. BUT it’s for the brand Innova and not for PETROL Innova. As both cars have different set of customers to target the marketing campaign should also focus on them differently. Like the Indica XETA started it for the petrol variant or Accent is doing for its CRDi.
So the first mantra is product differentiation. …
Product differentiation can be done by branding…
for branding we need a name ..
What do you call a diesel Innova?....Answer:--Innova (I know technically its D4D)
What do you call a petrol Innova?...Answer…Innova (I know technically its VVT-I)
As you must be aware of there are two types of strategies (Push, Pull). Both strategies are needed always! But in case of Innova we should focus on the pull strategy after all you can’t push a customer who has come to buy a diesel innova to buy petrol innova…right? You need to pull customer to come and ask for petrol innova.
For that you need to define segment. I would like to segment it on the basis of Usage. As it’s the only thing that will be different in profile of person buying Diesel or a petrol Innova. The heavy user would prefer to go for Diesel Innova because of obvious reasons of economy offering of a diesel car while the light user would use the car occasionally like on weekends taking whole family/friends out. Since the car would run around 500-1000 Km per month they won’t mind spending few extra amounts in exchange of better refinement, low maintenance and more peace of mind.
So now we have a defined target segment.
Its time for implementation. So we need advertisements?.
Oh Ok we also need brand ambassador. …what??.... Amir Khan???
He is alone in that big car?? Driving alone? …well no way…wrong person as a brand ambassador. For a car this big we can’t go with a single person who does not have an image even as a family man(no offence). …We need a whole family or a group of friends. All should be familiar faces. Easy option can be Indian cricket team. Present them as busy guys who are taking their free time to enjoy life with Innova. Or you can take the crew of saas bhi kabhi bahu thi!!!! lol.
Anyways one thing is for sure….Petrol Innova is not a mass market product. It’ll have a niche market. Even Maruti Versa had a tough time finding that market….Hope with better offering and premium brand image Innova can find one.
Best of luck...and have a good time at t-bhp
Rohi</div>

For cars availabe in both petrol and diesel variants the better version (as decided by the market) will prevail. These examples come to mind immediately:

1. Octy petrol a failure....diesel succesfull.
2. Indica and Indigo "--------------------"
3. Elantra "-----------------------------"
4. Qualis "------------------------------"
5. Scorpio "-----------------------------"
6. Safari "-------------------------------"

And I am sure there are many more. Similarly, there might be examples where the petrol model sold more than the diesel.

Point here is that the better car will prevail, be it petrol or diesel.

I know of a few people who are very environment aware and don't buy diesel vehicles because they are more polluting. There are arguements both ways but here's an acticle I read. Maybe one can appeal to this segment of people by positioning the petrol vehicle as more environment friendly.

Guys, should we also look at what TKM [and it's dealers] are doing today to push the Innova petrol, and where they could be doing things differently?

Another thought comes up - are public perceptions of diesels changing? Is it that people no longer see a diesel as a high maintenance, instead, consider it as on par with a petrol vehicle? Given a refined diesel like one fromToyota, are they ready to go for the diesel instead of the petrol?

One big reason for the failure of the Petrol Innova is the automotive culture of India. Over the years Indians have to come to associate or rather equate Vans, MUV's, SUV's with diesel. Whether this is the correct perception is a different topic altogether but I am sure we all will agree that for an Indian a car or automobile like Innova, Safari, Scorpio is always going to be associated with diesel and this applies to all Indians, from the first time car buyer to the millionaire. Add to that the ever improving diesel technology and it gets even more difficult to convince an Indian to go in for a Petrol MUV or SUV.

Taking my own example, I have lived in Toronto for over a year now and I still can't understand how anyone can buy a Petrol MUV, SUV or even a pick-Up!

Agreed - they are very rare in Malaysia and Singapore compared to the Innova. In fact the Fortuner is a mere Hilux pick up converted into an SUV similar to the Endeavour

Before one suggests may be the Innova pterol should be sold as an LPG/CNG variant, I read somewhere that the VVT engine is not suited to this application

I personally know two people who have Diesel Innova. Both of them don't run the car as much to justify the price difference between disel and petrol. What I mean is that their yearly expenditure on fuel is around 20% of the price difference. The reason they bought diesel innova is because of poor resale value of Petrol version. There is a significant drop there.

Regarind Innova can't sell in PC segment, I felt tha Innova sold a lot more in PC segment than Qualis. Rekha, do you have a breakup of MPV vs PC segment for Innova. It would be interesting to compare that with Qualis.

When Innova was lauched, TKM didn't expect the drop in sales in the Taxi Operator segment vis a vis Qualis. To a lot of Taxi operators (I talked to a couple myself), Innova wasn't as rugged as Qualis. Its probably more a perception because of its shape compared to Qualis. On the other hand they found out that a lot of people are buying Innova for their personal/family use. These people wouldn't have bought Qualis because of its bread box looks. So TKM repositioned Innova as a family car as well.

Absolutely. The Lancer Petrol sold pretty well. So did the Zen and Esteem despite having diesel variants. Ditto for the Ford Ikon, Fiat Palio, Hyundai Accent and some more.

OT:

an interesting ad in the TOI bangalore edition today. GM has compared the chevy aveo 1.4 against the fiesta Diesel.

In their comparison, they have taken fuel costs over three years and added that to teh initial purchase price and worked out that the chevy works out over 40K cheaper in the process. And this diff is not including maintennace costs which i feel would be higher for the fiesta anyways.

Moreover, their comparison showed an annual running of 15K kms, which is pretty much par for the course for most users. And the efficiency they claimed was 11.2 for the aveo and 15 for the fiesta (Autocar figures). So they were pretty upfront about that as well.

Not break horse power, brake horse power.
Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle - Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti (1475-1564)

I've seen both BHP(caps) and bhp(lower case) used.
Although for boiler horse power it's always bhp, not BHP.

Ram