[veyron_head]

The confidence they have on their failing brand is rather startling! For one, Someone
test driving a Nissan or Datsun would always keep that as the last choice. They would testdrive for the heck of it. Nissan could have thought of something like what Skoda is offering - buy now and pay in 2020. That would have both increased footfalls and increased sales, atleast marginally.

They better keep a lot of 8k cheques ready!

[GTO]

Originally Posted by Rajeevraj

Makes sense if you have a portfolio of cars that makes the customer go wow and have something that others in the segment cannot offer. With Nissan, apart from being a marginal player, there is nothing of that sort in their models.

Would agree with this statement generally; however, this offer is for the CVT models (Nissan, not Datsun) and would thus mean it's versus the competition's AMTs (AMTs are more popular than torque converters in this segment). Give me a CVT over an AMT anyday!

Originally Posted by The Brutailer

But, footfalls in the showroom will be very high!

Rightly said. It's all down to increasing whatever footfalls they can. A campaign like this will be more effective than a 'free accessories' offer. Getting the customer into a Nissan showroom today is 30% of the battle won. Nissan salesmen are sitting & twiddling their thumbs all day.

Originally Posted by NFS2024

The hassle involved in documentation and process in claiming that 8k worth accessory will make people run away from Nissan showrooms.

Us Indians - being Indians - will do anything for 8 grand. Little bit of inconvenience in visits & paperwork is nothing.

[dipen]

Reminds me of a similar play for Volvo V40 to fight the A class head-on. If you buy an A class after test driving the V40, Volvo will pay the first month EMI (TnC applicable)

Details : http://www.carsuk.net/volvo-v40-vs-m...the-challenge/

[i74js]

I called up Nissan dealership and have been given to understand that

- It is not guaranteed to every consumer and there is a fine print
- It may not be available for cars within segment that have longer waiting period i.e. Swift etc. which are previously booked by consumers and are delivered during this promotion period may not be eligible (he was slightly doubtful here, but this may as well be true)
- The definition of same segment means (Automatic with Automatic irrespective of technology i.e AMT / CVT / TC / DSG etc).

Typically this is a kind of competition among the manufacturers with off-the-shelf inventory / readily available cars and certainly for off-beat buyers (who may not want to buy from MSIL and Hyundai).

How this is going to impact the sale of Nissan Cars is difficult to predict.

[LoneWolf9]

The plan is not as Idiotic as it looks like.

I think its brilliantly thought. Whether they get the results or not is another story.

Apart from increasing the foot falls. Let's talk about the fact that Nissan is actually incentivizing the customer to buy competitor's car.

what the plan does not reveal is what you would get if you buy Nissan's car and that's the whole point of the strategy.

So someone has finalized competitor A's car, comes to Test Drive Micra just for the 8K accessories. Finds the car okay still wants to buy the competitor's car.

Is now offered accessories worth 15-20K, discounts worth Rs XXXX. Oh we have an 2017 model as well where we have much higher discount.

I think if not all, some would blink and that's the whole point of this campaign. You can see umpteen examples on Team bhp itself where the car was finalized based on the maximum discount offered between two cars.

Business pay money just to get a Lead of someone who intends to buy a car.
Here they are getting guaranteed lead of someone who's surely going to buy a car in the next 7 days.

Nissan is paying 8K worth ( actual value would be much much lesser) to get that lead. Honestly Nissan is paying peanuts and getting the maximum bang for buck.

[manij]

Originally Posted by LoneWolf9

The plan is not as Idiotic as it looks like.

I think its brilliantly thought. Whether they get the results or not is another story.

Apart from increasing the foot falls. Let's talk about the fact that Nissan is actually incentivizing the customer to buy competitor's car.

Nissan is paying 8K worth ( actual value would be much much lesser) to get that lead. Honestly Nissan is paying peanuts and getting the maximum bang for buck.

I fully agree.
1) They can only do this if the are confident of their car quality:
Micra: Most reviews and feedback we have on Micra are positive. (In fact today travelled by Ola - one trip in a Xcent and another in a Micra...felt the Micra to be much better in terms of ride/comfort)
Datsun Redi-GO AMT: Uniquely positioned and cheaper than most other cars.

After-Sales and Service is another area altogether where they are significantly weak, but we saw messages that they were focussing on service and first time right, etc. So there seems to be concerted effort on Sales and Service, and I presume this may also have been extended to other areas, e.g. salesmen incentives for enabling a concerted effort (Hope it is not a 'last ditch' effort).

2) Getting footfalls into Nissan showrooms - very important task, presume it will be achieved. Presume there will be newspaper ads, etc. to support.

3) Nissan has anyways been providing good discounts (and/or 'gold' offers) on Micra for last few months. They can continue to bait customers with the offers.

4) They would need to have really aggressive salesmen who followup regularly for 7 days atleast after the test drive. I can imagine that the responsible salesmen and dealership will get negatively impacted for every claim made. This may drive energy levels of the salesmen and could have brought in salesmen schemes also so they may also get other 'carrots' and not only the 'stick'. Last time I visited the Nissan showroom, the lady who spoke to me was not at all aggressive or even following up.

5) I tend to think that most people are inherently honest/honorable and may not want to benefit like this, even if they are eligible.

6) Who knows what the people claiming the benefit will have to sign up for - e.g. regular calls from Nissan's support team on how the competitor car is doing or problems it has, getting their names published with details they may otherwise have liked to keep private, etc.

7) Overall looks like a novel marketing idea in the market. Nissan needs the chutzpah.