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Formally defined by Aaker as “the set of human characteristics associated with a brand”, it is sort of a pseudo human persona that represents a brand.

From the initial vision and the identity portrayed by Ratan Tata as discussed earlier in the Brand Identity section, it seems that Tata Nano should have been a lower middle class family man, who has many family commitments and believes in the traditional trustworthy name of Tata.

“He is a hard-working human being who aspires to give his family the best that is within his reach. During rainy seasons and during longer trips within the city, he struggles with his family of 5 on a two wheeler. Buying a Maruti 800 is beyond his financial reach. Having a car would

definitely be a blessing for my family during harsh weather conditions and a very safe mode of travel”.

From the intuitive portrayal developed above, we can hope to derive a proposed set of attributes on the 5-dimensional framework given by Aaker.

In our opinion based on the initial vision of Ratan Tata, the brand personality should have looked like the following, on a ranking scale:

1. Sincere – the vision portrays a down-to-earth, matter of fact product.

2. Ruggedness – The conditions in the rural and semi-urban are seen to be tough so maybe the initial personality needed to be this

3. Competence – The Nano had to be reliable and no less intelligent than close competitors. 4. Excitement – probably the priority of a consumer in the above portrayal would not have been

adventure, could be aspirational but still the overall vision stated otherwise. 5. Sophistication

But relaunch of the Tata Nano and currently available advertisement campaigns portray a personality which is different and probably is - “I am young 21 year old, who aspires to drive

around in a car with my friends. I aspire to go on trips outside the city with my friends in a limited budget, but in style.”

It does seem like the personality of this re-invented Tata Nano has a different dimensional mix based on the analysis of the company centric efforts. This is expected to boost the fun and excitement dimension of the personality of Tata Nano.

1. Excitement 2. Competence 3. Sincere 4. Ruggedness 5. Sophistication

However, survey results indicate that the updated brand personality and related brand communication efforts of the company is yet to have a wide ranging impact and transform the brand image in the minds of the target segment. This understanding calls for the need for consistent and focused efforts in communication over a period of time.

Figure 5 Survey Q32. Which of the following words would you most associate TATA NANO with?

7.3 Brand Positioning

The goal of positioning is to find ‘gaps’ in the market unfulfilled by current competitors, or to create an untapped position in the market (or consumers’ minds and hearts). The purpose of brand positioning is to ensure that the consumer instantaneously associates a certain functional benefit (or a few functional benefits) with the brand in question.

Effective brand positioning relies on identifying which functional, emotional and self-expressive benefits the target market values as important and then ensuring that the organization is able to deliver (at least one of) these benefits to them.

Category membership forms the basis for any positioning exercise for a new brand. From the inception of the Tata Nano project it was clear that the Nano belonged to the entry level small car market. It can probably be even argued that it created a new target segment, one in price bracket between the 2 wheelers and the cheapest comparable 4 wheeler at that time which was the Maruti 800.

7.3.1 Points of Parity

 Safety and other standards had to be at par with existing vehicles and for getting approved by government standards agencies.

 Air Conditioning , Number of colors , variants

7.3.2 Points of difference

 Nano boasted of the best-in-class mileage of 25kmpl  It boasted of the highest in class interior space.  Stylish design and youthful look

 4 year/ 60,000 Km Warranty

It seems so to us that the dual identity/personality trait has propagated into the positioning aspect of the Tata Nano as well.

 The Interior space and the warranty could be more favoring the family personality

 The mileage point probably caters to both segments since India is generally known to be a mileage sensitive market in automotive.

 The youthful looks and other appearance tailored towards the younger consumer

7.4 Brand Communication

In this section, we evaluate the degree of consistency of brand identity, brand positioning and brand personality across all forms of brand communication and customer touch-points, including advertising, product design and packaging, pricing, brand ambassadors or champion, distribution channel etc.

In an effort to popularize its Nano brand, Tata Motors has entered into collaboration with shopping portal EBay to sell various Nano merchandise. The merchandise includes Nano branded Titan watches and dry-fit T-shirts for men and women. Nano shaped pen drives, mouse, scale models, caps and key-chains among others can also be purchased from the portal. This is aligned with the 2012 relaunch positioning.

Ratan Tata being the brand champion would however not align with the post 2012 positioning and hence the company has to bring in more youth communication through ‘Art in Motion’ and other such campaigns and events.

As commented upon earlier on the external identity, the vibrant colors and body design of the car is quite appealing and aligned with the youthful positioning. The distribution strategy has been changed over a period of time to have Nano specific dealer outlets and this should aid rather than hinder communication of the identity, personality or positioning.

7.5 Brand Knowledge

Brand knowledge consists of brand awareness and brand image and is a major driver of brand equity. The brand knowledge a consumer has could have been obtained through advertising, brand design and identity consistency, previous brand experiences and brand building strategies.

7.5.1 Brand Awareness

The ability for people to name a brand when referring to a product category or being able to identify a brand correctly when faced with some or the other brand identities is referred to as brand awareness. The marketing efforts of creating brand awareness are directed at registering the brand in the minds of the target consumers. Given this, we review the survey results to understand if Tata Nano marketing efforts thus far have reached the target consumer segment. Possible activities to increase brand awareness include wide-spread advertising in which repetition of the logo and slogan becomes ubiquitous (e.g. Nike’s tagline is ‘Just do it’), publicity, sponsorship of community activities (e.g. sponsoring a sports tournament), brand extensions as well as increasing the number of distribution channels.

The first brand characteristic that we investigated in the Tata Nano surveys was Brand Awareness. Brand Awareness measures the accessibility of the brand in memory. Brand awareness is a precondition for the existence of brands (Franzen and Bouwman, 2001:171). If people are not aware of brands, they cannot become consumers / users thereof.

We used two approaches (Brand Recall and Brand Recognition) to elicit responses. For the Brand Recall part, we asked three unaided and open ended questions (Q1-Q3 in the survey).

7.5.1.1 Brand Recall

Brand Recall reflects the ability of the consumer to retrieve the Brand from the memory when given the product category. The total extent of Brand Recall as measured by the percentage of the respondents who were familiar with the brand Tata Nano is depicted below. As can be seen, 14.71% of the survey sample (n=73) were aware of the Tata Nano brand. A consolidated analysis of the 2 survey samples were done as brand awareness questions were posed without revealing the brand, but only by providing various cues.

If we analyze from the STP perspective for the initial two wheeler/bike target segment, the survey data gives a very interesting picture. 44 survey respondents owned no bike or 1 bike and the Brand Recall amongst that group is 4 i.e. a 9% Brand Awareness level. Whereas 6 respondents owned 2 or more bikes and all 6 were able to recall the Tata Nano brand i.e. a 100% Brand Awareness.

Of the total responses, only 5 could recall the Tata Nano advertisement in some form which is about 7.35% recall. If 64.7% of the respondents form the target market (0 or 1 bike) and the advertisement Recall of the Nano is 7.35% for that segment, it makes us question the effectiveness of earlier launch communication in reaching the target segment.

38.24% 14.71% 0.00% 5.00% 10.00% 15.00% 20.00% 25.00% 30.00% 35.00% 40.00% 45.00%

% of recalls on eliciting 'small car' brands

800 Beetle Alto Brio City Figo i10 i20 Nano

7.5.1.2 Brand Recognition

Brand Recognition reflects the ability of the consumer to confirm prior exposure to the brand. We asked four aided and close ended questions (Q4-Q7 of the survey) to evaluate brand recognition.

Tata Motors had run two campaigns with the tagline, first being “Art in Motion” and the second one being “Aapki Khushiyon Ki Chabi”. 20.97% of the respondents were able to correctly recognize the “Art in Motion” tagline and 30.65% had “no idea” about which brand this is associated with. What is more interesting is 19.35% associated it with high end car like Mercedes, Jaguar, Mini Cooper etc. However when Tata Motors ran the campaign with “Aapki Khushiyon Ki Chabi” the Brand Recognition jumped to 54.10%.

Fortunately for Tata Motors, the brand recognition is distinct from competitors. When a cut out of Nano was shown to the respondents, 57.81% were able to recognize it as Tata Nano with no other Brand score greater than 6.25%.

One other dimension we measured was with respect to Competition (Q6 in the survey) on how Tata Nano fares when it comes to competition in terms of Brand Recognition. Below table summarizes the results:

Tagline (Car) Aided Awareness (%Respondents)

Let’s go (Alto) 66.04%

Aapki Khushiyon Ki Chabi (Nano) 57.41%

Sunshine Car (Santro) 52.94%

7.5.2 Brand Image

Brand Image is defined as consumer perception of the brand and is measured as brand associations held in memory. These are the perceptions, attitudes and associations that consumers have formed of the brand through the brand identity elements, advertising campaigns, and community programs, past experiences, word-of-mouth etc.

For the Brand Image part, we asked four open ended questions (Q18-Q21 of the survey). We followed the Qualitative approach to analyze this dimension of the Brand element. We collected all the responses and ran it by wordle to see which of the words were used most frequently by the respondents. Below are the results:

For Q18: What comes to your mind when you hear “TATA NANO”?

Q19: Which words would you use to describe “TATA NANO”?

From the responses to Q18 & Q19, we see that typical imagery that is formed of the Tata Nano is - Small, Indian, Car, Autorickshaw, Cheap, Value-for-money etc. No surprises there. However the eye popper was – Potential.

When we analyze this chart in conjunction with the words respondents used to describe the Brand Personality like in the bar chart above, we clearly see that the Nano is a Family Oriented, Sincerity, Genuine and Youthful (with Pretentious being the odd one out), the congruence is striking. The Personality associated with Nano is predominately that of Sincerity. It is the vibrant colors of the car body that has caused Youthful to get high marks, which indicates that Nano is better aligned with the target segment and positioning atleast on certain attributes.

Thus when we asked the question “Which kind of people purchase Nano?”, 31% said elderly and 44% said Married and Married with kids. The results were clearly not unanimously pointing to

Unmarried 25% Married 22% Married w/ kids 22% Elderly 31% 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14

the youth segment. This indicates that mixed concurrent campaigns such as “Art in Motion” targeted towards the segment, and “Aapki Khushiyon Ki Chabi” for the family oriented segment creates confused positioning in the minds of the customer. This also brings out that repositioning is a costly and time consuming activity. The company should phase out the old campaigns of family oriented positioning and use a consistent communication to target the youth core segment only.

It is interesting to note that the parent brand “Tata” has mostly all positive emotions associated with it whereas for the Tata Nano brand the negative emotions like disappointment, shame , irritation figure as well. The “economy” perception seems to be well inherited by the Tata Nano brand from its parent Tata.

Word association results for both Tata Nano and Nano surveys show that the top 3 associations made are for:

 Family oriented  Youthful  Genuine

7.6 Brand Equity

Brand Equity is the differential effect that brand awareness and brand associations have on consumer response to the marketing of the brand (Keller, 2013, Ch.2). Positive customer based brand equity is seen to provide one or more of the following benefits:

 Make customer more accepting of new brand extension  Make customer less price sensitive

 More likely they are to pay a price premium for the brand  More likely they would recommend it to friends

 More likely they would are to remain loyal if it is out of stock  More likely they would take the time to search for it and

 More likely they are to purchase other products / services related to the brand name

From the analysis of the responses to Q24-Q31 in the survey, we see that the brand does not resonate with the target segment and the opinion is largely neutral to negative. 30%-42% of the target segment has a neutral attitude towards Tata Nano in terms of loyalty, recommendation or the likelihood of purchase and 37-59% has a negative to strongly negative attitude towards the brand, which calls for immediate replaning of the branding and marketing strategy and consistent execution over a period of time to realize the benefits.

27% 22% 41% 6% 3% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% Strongly disagree

Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree

Q24:

I consider myself loyal to TATA NANO.

22% 25% 33% 17% 2% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% Strongly disagree

Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree

Q25:

TATA NANO is one brand I would prefer to buy or use. 23% 23% 42% 13% 0% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% Strongly disagree

Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree

Q26:

I really identify with people who own TATA NANO.

31% 26% 39% 5% 0% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% Strongly disagree

Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree

Q27 :

I feel as if I almost belong to a club with other users of TATA NANO.

27% 29% 35% 10% 0% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% Strongly disagree

Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree

26% 26% 30% 18% 0% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% Strongly disagree

Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree

Q29 :

I really like to talk about TATA NANO to others.

21% 29% 40% 11% 0% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% Strongly disagree

Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree

Q30

I am/would be proud to have others know that I use TATA NANO.

To elaborate further, the disconcerting statistics for Tata Motor Brand Manager would be the strong swing towards the negative territory (Strongly Disagree and Disagree) on key parameters of:

 Loyalty: with 49% respondents saying they Strongly Disagree/Disagree that they are loyal towards Tata Nano

 Purchase intent : with 48% respondents saying they Strongly Disagree/Disagree that they are considering a purchase of Tata Nano

 Pride : Even if they were to purchase, 49% respondents felt they Strongly Disagree/Disagree that they would be proud to let other know they use Tata Nano

Given the above facts we can conclude that Tata Nano has a very weak Brand Equity in the minds of the consumer.

The above needs to be evaluated in light of the pre-launch mania that the Tata Nano had  Consumer paying Application amount of Rs.500 to book the Nano

 Consumers willing to wait 6 months and more for deliveries  Pride of ownership amongst the first few customers

It could be opined that there was considerable interest in the target segment. However, the product quality and user experience did not match the target segment expectations and thus did not aid in building brand equity.

18% 19% 42% 19% 2% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% Strongly disagree

Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree

8 Key Insights & Recommendations

In document Sentencias para Mujeres en el ámbito penal: Impartición de Justicia con Perspectiva de Género en el marco de los derechos humanos (página 99-102)