How to market in India: Ford India MD
Michael Boneham is an Australian selling an American-branded Italian-named car in India, and he’s having a ball, PAWAN LUTHRA reports.
Michael Boneham Phot: UNSW Australian School of Business
70% of Ford’s worldwide growth will come from the Asia Pacific1 Africa region in the next decade. This was the bold prediction made by Australian born and educated Michael Boneham, president of Ford Motors India.
In Sydney recently, Michael Boneham was a guest speaker at the University of NSW’s Australian School of Business. His talk was titled “Emerging and diverse India – challenges and opportunities.”
Boneham should know all about succeeding in India, having recently launched a new car Figo Ford there earlier this year. Since its launch, the car has sold over 50,000 units, making it into the top 10 selling name plates in India. Though Ford entered the Indian car market in 1997, till it launched Figo (Italian for ‘cool’), it had less than 1.8% of the Indian car market.
“Figo is a game changer for Ford and will help us to increase our market share in India”, Boneham said.
And it seems Ford is keen to position itself to benefit from the ever growing Indian market. The industry forecast is that there will be over 9 million commercial and passenger vehicles in India by 2019, up from 2 million in 2008 and 3.1 million in 2010. The growth trajectory is even sharper than China, potentially being fuelled by the younger Indian population dynamics.
Boneham admitted that Figo was targeted at the upwardly mobile mature youth market. “Our market research indicated and largely confirmed to us the complexity of the Indian market. In other parts of the world people look at the features of the cars first and then the price, it is the other way around in India. Aspirational youth still live in a joint family system and seek advice from their elders on major decisions,” he said.
India continues to remain an interesting market with its diversity, and a number of factors make up India. “Education, Bollywood, spirituality, cricket, family values, increasing female influences in decision making, pride in the newly emerging Indian global giants in the corporate world such as Tatas, Mittals etc, all play an important factor in the psyche of the Indian market,” Boneham lectured.
“From a Figo marking point of view, we undertook the classic purchase funnel – awareness, favourable exposure, consideration, shopping, intention, closure and repeat referral,” he said. “In fact, we used a fair bit of social media. We created a lot of buzz and excitement for the Ford small car through a fun filled viral teaser campaign. We allowed a number of media and bloggers in the car market to test drive the product and spread the word,” he told the audience.
Obviously, it has all worked, with the Figo going on to become a success. Boneham is however realistic enough to know that the Indian consumer will expect a new launch every 12-18 months, if Ford needs to keep ahead of the competition from Suzuki Swift, Tata Indican, Volkswagen Polo, Honda Jazz etc.
But with the view that India is positioned to be the world’s third largest car market over the next decade, this is certainly an exciting market which his bosses in the United States are keen for him to make inroads into.
