Maruti Suzuki India eyes new strategies to woo first time buyers

With the passenger car sales declining over the past two months over spiralling fuel prices and high interest rates, India’s largest car manufacturer, Maruti Suzuki India, is working on customer specific marketing strategy to increase its sales among the first time buyers, a company official said.

“We have a maximum 47 per cent market share among the first time buyers. We have seen its people who want to replace their vehicles are not buying at this moment, not the first time buyers. We are increasing our efforts to attract more first time buyers,” Shashank Srivastava, chief general manager (marketing), Maruti Suzuki India said.

The company has starterd campaign for targeted customers. “We are looking at a specific customer base like orange growers in Nagpur, jute mill owners or mango growers in Bengal. We are also working to increase our sales in rural areas,” he said.

According to him, the growth this fiscal year will be in single digit. “In the beginning of the year, a 12-15 per cent growth was predicted for the industry. So far, the passenger car industry has grown about four per cent. We expect sales will pick up in the coming festive season, but still it will be in the single digit.”

However, the company will go ahead with its capacity expansion plan. “The capacity expansion will go on as it is part of our long term plans. The industry size is expected to be about 4.2 million by 2015. We will have a total annual capacity of 1.7 million units by the time which will help up us to maintain the present market share of 44 per cent,” Srivastava said.

At present Maruti has a total combined cpacity of 1.2 million at its Gurgaon and Maneswar plants. By October this year, an additional capacity of 0.25 million will be added with the second line of production in Maneswar. Another 0.25 million will be added in the capcity by 2013 with the start of third line of production in Maneswar.