[wheelguy]

Called emerging market outlets internally, these dealerships will showcase only one or two smaller, more popular cars that are relevant for the given location, said Vivek-B Srivatsa, head of marketing for passenger cars at Tata Motors.

Mumbai | New Delhi: Having plugged gaps in its product portfolio that marred sales and market share over the past few years, Tata Motors has now turned its focus on sales and marketing with a long-term aim of achieving 10% market share in the domestic car market.

To get incremental sales, the company is looking to increase its geographical reach in the country through boutique dealerships for smaller towns. It is looking for partners who have a wide retail network to share space with, like oil marketing companies (OMCs). This will bring down the investment of dealers, while also allow rapid entry into newer markets.

"A Tiago customer wants to see a Tiago, he doesn't want to see five cars, he doesn't want a huge showroom," Srivatsa told ET. "In fact, in smaller towns, huge showrooms create hesitation."

Source

[GTO]

The culture at most Tata Motors dealerships is anyways poor, and it's not really much better at the PSU oil marketing company retail outlets. This might save costs in the short-term, but I don't think it's a good move in the longer term as Tata Motors will have even lesser control over the "customer experience". Have small showrooms if you want, but sharing space with a completely unrelated 3rd-party helped no one in the car business.

Dealership setup & running costs are anyway low in the smaller towns.

[TROOPER]

Smart move by Tata Motors.

They have a unique system wherein the customer support, lock, stock and barrel puts the entire blame for any issue on the dealer, whether they deserve it or not. Cause when you try informing Tata of an issue via the TMSC app/email, a complaint is raised against a dealer, there's no option to 'refer' your case. So in these cases, the dealer gets dejected as to why the customer has raised a complaint for 'warranty claim' or product niggles. And the only way to gain attention of higher ups is by constant bombarding on twitter, that too if you tag Pratap Bose and Vivek Srivatsa, rain dancing outside the dealership and uploading the video on Youtube or getting a thread started on Team-BHP.

Now, with the above Govt of India inspired customer support, they plan on tying up with the Govt of India to sell cars. In places where Maruti is probably their 'dada'. Good luck wooing customers in these small towns, in the presence of Maruti's butter smooth customer support and logistics. Even if this idea does work out, Tata's customer support will ensure to run things into the ground.