Team-BHP - Rebranding/ Badge Engineering

I'm curious to know why companies engage in rebadging products... (as in the case of the Optra and a couple of other vehicles in India) especially in this day and age when information "flies" across the globe in a matter of seconds

I always considered the Chevrolet brand as being associated with large American cars, for example.

mvk

After taking over Daewoo, GM obviously wudnt want to use that name. Daewoo was already defunct. If the Optra was badged a Daewoo very few people wud have bought it since Daewoo was a loss-making company. People wudnt wanna take the risk of buying the car when the company is gonna shut down anytime (as in the case of Peugeot). Thats why the Chevy badge. One more reasn why the Optra was badged a Chevy was bcos GM wanted to bring the Chevy brand into India. Chevy's own products would have been a bit expensive for the Indian market.

besides GM believes that the Chevy-Impala brand from the 50s still holds in india. I am quite confused with GM's marketing. they have the MITSUBISHI lancer, OPEL corsa, CHEVERLOET optra/forrester all being sold and serviced under one roof. It would make sense if these were targetting different demographic segments (under 20, 20-30, 40-60, 60+) like Saturn, Pontiac, Oldsmobile etc. Anyone know what GM is trying to do?

GreenHex,

Different brands invite varying perceptions and expectations from place to place. For eg, a brand that may be considered luxurious in one country may be known as a bargain brand in another country.

With rampant consolidation and mergers happening in the automotive industry, CEOs are finding themselves access to endless brand options for any given market. Thus they evaluate what brand already has equity or has the most potential, and then go ahead and launch it.

All three Chevrolet India products are re-badged. Chevy Tavera (Isuzu), Chevy Optra (Daewoo) and the Forrester (Subaru). While Daewoo has negative brand equity in our country, Subaru and Isuzu are yet unknown quantities.

Thus....Chevrolet!! There are too many other examples in almost every market there is. Info-Tech, electronics, clothes....

GTO

One re-branding that never took place was suzuki in India.

I was under the impression that when Suzuki took over maruti and were bringing out a host of new products, they would use the suzuki name for the higher end models...

With companies like toyota spending millions on a new brand to justify a price premium for their cars, Suzuki already had half the work done.

The new models like the swift, sx4 and vitara alone could have used the suzuki name, and the rest of the older lineup could have stuck to maruti.

When brand image is everything, many people might not want to be seen in a vitara that has the same logo as an alto!

First, it was "parts sharing" by a manufacturer between different models. FIAT, MARUTI, SKODA, TATA... everyone does it.

And now we have two different manufacturers launching the same cars with the same features, the same engine, the same dash, etc. under different names. Of course, with a few nips & tucks & their logo!

E.g. - Micra & Pulse, Sunny & soon-to-be-launched Scala.

Why this practice? What do you guys think about this?

Quote:

Originally Posted by raj_5004 (Post 2727455)

Why this practice? What do you guys think about this?

1) Cuts down costs of development of a new car
2) By modifying features of the 2 cars, it allows manufacturers to position the cars differently : one as VFM while other as over-the-top. This allows them to tap a wider customer base

Quite similar to how there are 3 versions of a car : hatch, sedan and station-wagon.

I seriously fail to understand the concept behind this practice. With the Vento and Rapid it was still acceptable to me to some extent because the cars look a little different. Even then I see no reason for anyone to choose the Vento over the Rapid apart from Skoda after sales and love for a particular brand. The actual sales show reflect the same fallacy too with Vento sales suffering. No other brand had spare diesel cars lying unsold in there yards other then VW ( to a large extent).

The Renault-Nissan partnership has left me even more amused. Both of them are fairly new to the market with next to zero brand loyalty or fanfare. Still they want to sell exactly the same car. And in there case the 2 cars look like a carbon copy of eachother. It doesn't make sense to me as to why will someone pay more for a Pulse over the Micra?

Sharing parts is a good business decision. But I feel the companies should ensure that each product has a distinct feel to it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by raj_5004 (Post 2727455)

Not getting into the technicality of it, the one reason I can think of is the target audience which one company targets might not be convinced about the brand name and hence wants to sell the "same product" under a different brand, as one might have better post-sales service, better customer care, easy accessibility, etc.

Having said that, if the customer is not satisfied with the product itself in the first place (be it be under any brand name), the downfall of the product is certain, especially given the awareness in the society regarding what is what, and anybody investing nothing less than 5 L will obviously look into all the pros and cons that a brand or a product can offer, so IMO whitewashing an unsatisfactory product with any brand name will not serve the purpose.

It just shows that it's all in the mind.
Same product, different brand (with the accompanying different customer perception - I mean the average customer - not a Bhpian:D). Well - this happens in other products as well - esp brands outsourcing from third party facilities. I guess it makes some kind of bottom line sense to the companies concerned else they wouldn't be doing it.
Just imagine if the Tatas had some deal with Honda (for example) and got Nano badged under the Honda roof (with some minor tweaks on the grill or something) and sold... :D