How Tatas plan to turn around Fiat in India

Nice Read:

http://business.rediff.com/slide-show/2 ... -india.htm

Cheers,
Vroom

 

Article doesn't mention anything special.

One limitation and advantage that Fiat has is that it's a pre-dominanatly small car maker. This can work wonders in India since they can launch cars like the Panda & Idea here apart from the GP. The disadvantage is that there is a price limit to which hatchbacks can sell here. The market is just not ready for cars like the Bravo no matter what engine and what technology it packs so what should be worrying Fiat India is the gap in their line up above the Linea. What if a Linea owner wants to remain with the Fiat group at the time of upgrade? There are no options at all. If he is used to the Euro build & stablity he will go to VW (Jetta) or Skoda (Laura) and above that to the VW (Passat) or Skoda (Superb).

 

first and foremost is that tata shud look after existing Fiat customer in a much better way. their staffs shud not push prospect Fiat customer to indica or any other product. rather they shud remove all confusion about Fiat and encourage them to go for Fiat.

 

Staff has targets to meet, their commission hinges on actual sales not on attempts made to sell a car. Honestly, I don't blame the sales person. Fiat's used to be very hard to sell. Faced with questions on Fiat's seriousness about India, spares, service issues etc etc ANY salesperson will take the easy way out and tell the prospective customer that he should take a look at the Indica if peace of mind is what he wants. I would do the same! Sure, Fiat can train the staff to counter such questions, but it's one thing to do this in a conference room and totally another at the showroom floor. The ONLY way out is for Fiat to work hard at removing such insecurities by launching new model's / variants , improving sales and service expereince and giving better customer satisfaction. This will result in increased sales, which in turn will automatically give that all important peace of mind to prospective customers. The more the number of Fiat's people see on the road, the lesser will they ask the typical questions about Fiat's committment, service, spares issues.

 

1. There are a whole lot of Fiats that I see on road here in Mumbai these days, so surely sales have picked up.
2. I would be really interested to know their sales figures for the month of August after they started airing Fiat Punto ads on a consistent basis on TV channels.

Cheers,
Vroom

 

It's not cheap to train these sales folks since they have tendency to shift jobs very fast. FIAT cannot train everytime someone comes on board only to see him/her leave in couple of months. About punto sales when i asked the SA last week how many 90HP they sold he said somewhere around 10 but said linea sells more than punto.Am yet to see a 90HP on road here in Hyd

 

Well said Amit... Fiat should start thinking in this terms.. They should not only think of the technology but also the prices atleast in India which matters alot..