Sarabs Blog

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Buying a car  is one of the most important decision for most of us , now some body will say with 1 million cars leaving Indian showrooms a year it should not be that big an occasion , but believe me (and it comes from an ex car salesman ) it is , I have seen  people   wait for days for the auspicious day to come and buy a car , and on the designated day whole family as a unit will barge into the show room with their personal pundit (priest) to ensure that everybody including almighty is satisfied , with such high degree of involvement it is obviously not very easy to sell a car more so when interest rate have gone through the roof , inflation is at all time high , people have lost money everywhere from stock market, real estate, to business…………. With the advent of technology user approach might have changed   but the user behavior remains the same 

Let us look at one of the real time user behavior I encountered yesterday…..

At  7:30 pm as the door bell rang and I opened , here I see one of my closest buddies standing out unscheduled and whats more besides him stands a swanky new car that he had bought ………. I was a little jolted because I never had idea that he was planning to buy a car , now it is not because he tells me everything but being a ex-car salesman I know a thing or two about cars , so expected that people around me will take my feedback before buying ……… anyways thinking he might have his reasons , I congratulated him and asked him to take me for a drive , sitting in the car I couldnot stop myself asking him ,how did you take the decision to buy this terrific car, looking at me with a big grin on his face ,”well it was not that difficult simple 5 steps”.
 

1. I decided, how much money I am ready to spend

2. Checked the pictures of all models available in this price (showed it to my wife on the net , used a automated tool to see the what fits our budget/feature matrix, got a good  3D view of every model  )

3. Asked the recommendations about gas spending and repair problems on related forums

4.  Put up an enquiry on one  of the websites asking for a test drive

5. Found the best price and offer on net and asked the concerned person to deliver the car at my doorstep.

Not very difficult hmmmm……….. Well to start with I was relieved that I left my job as a   car salesman , because I might not have had a job now…………:( ,but the thing that stuck me was how technology is changing the way people are making decisions vis a vis high involvemenmt products like cars , having been a car salesman I think Indian marketers atleast majority of them have not completely woken up to the challenge , because I still see them running after the traditional media both for sales and marketing .

So this sets up the agenda for todays post

1.  How important is internet as a medium for  Car Manufacturers/marketers .

2.  How the different players are currently using it in India

3.   What are the possible strategies they can use

1.  How Important is Internet as a Media for Car marketers 

                                                               Source- Yahoo-IMRB Study 

                                                                 Source- Yahoo- IMRB study 

Now two things are clear  after the from above clips . Approximate 30 %  of internet users are   using internet to find out information about cars and people who are looking for cars are  most frequent users of net , so you have a customer segment  which is increasing as I write this post and who will be sitting some where else while you(car marketers) play their multi dollars campaigns on television and print .

How the different players are currently using it in India

So what are the Indians players doing well to start with looking at websites , they have definitely spruced up their websites which look much more user friendly , than before couple of them notably tata motors still carries a archaic design.  Apart from this online banner advertisement s has increased drastically for all the manufacturers , so probably there is some part of the marketing budget and effort that they are devoting to online media .

Niche sites like Carwale.com , carazoo.com, autoindia.com have created a dedicated online space where users can converge and look for there car needs across the segment .

These sites are slowly developing forums with good amount of activity that will help shape decisions of the users .

Possible Online strategies for Car Marketers

1. Contests : Contests can be one big pull for customers fiat used it for the design of 5oo very successfully building contest around product design and marketing campaigns is a great way to keep users interested and build a loyal following , italso helps to create a lot of  viral campaigns.

2. Forum Management: Companies should look at ways to listen to what customers are saying  by studying what is happening at different forums , it should  as a supplement to costly market research studies these companies indulge into , and it is definitely a very cheap and trustworthy supplement.

3. Blogging : Concept of corporate bloggers has not been exploited by the Indian companies, these is one medium which you can use tp reach to the customers as well as prospective employees.

4. Idea Management platforms : The Marketers should look at creating more and more idea management platforms which can be used as an effective tool for product development as well as marketing , these platforms are much better than the simulated platforms which Marketing Research companies try to create.

Consumers behavior today is being shaped by technology, though motivations remain the same , for a more integrated marketing startegy marketers have to look at new channels of opportunities being created .

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Last weekend with nothing much to do I had to see through one of the many ubiquitous reality shows that are donning the prime time on our television sets , well for starters I don’t like to watch all the reality stuff , but I had to …… because I was sitting with a friend who cannot do away with it , he is one of the dudes who burns 100 bucks per week sending SMSes to his favorite participant , I have always been surprised at the number of messages that come for these people especially when an SMS costs 5 bucks not cheap by any standards.

As the show got over I casually asked my friend how can you spend 100 bucks on somebody you don’t even know adding you never spend a buck to call me , and use the [rather unfair] missed call route ………….., with a distinctively calm version of casualness,pat comes the reply ,because I feel part of the show , I think my vote counts as much as Himesh Reshamayia’s comments (for non starters Himesh is currently one of the hottest music directors in bollywood).

I was taken aback as I did not expect such a response , This guy( a self professed techie ) is talking something called Participative Marketing ……….

For starters participative marketing is a revolutionary marketing model. Different from the traditional Interruptive Marketing where consumers are interrupted and forced to watch advertising while they are in the middle of some other engagements, The chracterisitics include brand experience, interaction[two way], and expansion through viral marketing within a particular consumer community (Reference: Tuna Media).

Well this concept is revolutionary or not, future will tell but one thing is sure that it is  definitely not new . We can go back and look at different examples where people have used different participative techniques to market the product , Harley Davidson cross country races can be counted as one of them, The concept in fact goes back to early part of 20th century when  Harvard Researchers were doing research on work productivity and work conditions at one of the factories of Lucent technologies ,the researchers asked the workers to participate in certain activities under different work conditions like working for long hours or short hours etc , what they found out was whatever be the work condition after the activity the productivity of the workers went up, they were baffled to see the productivity went up for even those workers who were asked to participate in activities in dark work environment and whats more the workers became advocates of whatever they did in the participation mode …………That’s is when researchers coined the term Hawthorne effect (Hawthorne is the name of the city where the factory was located ), which denote positive effect of participation…………..

This concept of participation has not been exploited by marketers anywhere near to its potential ………and the reasons have been different one of the reason has been traditional marketers have not looked at this as a media , other reason has been that marketers did not have access to tools which they can use to run a scalable participative marketing campaign……..

But all this is history with the advent of Web 2.0, which provided tools to create an environment on the web where people can seamlessly participate , contribute agree , disagree collectively on anything under the sun.

And some of the smart marketers have started using these tools to reach to their customers, these tools are making mass customization possible which has been a pipe dream of marketers for ever , we have examples where successful participative campaigns have been started by some of the most forward looking and traditional companies , Sun silk gang of girls is one tat comes to ,P&G has created Tremor wherein they have enlisted quarter a million of students aged between 13 and 19 to spread information about brands (though it is a slightly controversial approach to participative marketing), Automakers across the world are launching contests on popular web 2.0 forums like you tube which tries to involve and engage users with the brand .

The examples are many but still they represent a very small portion of the marketing universe , I think it is about time that marketers realize that if tthey cannot engage there customers in a participative mode , some body else is going to and Hawthorne effect is universally applicable

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