Maruti targets rural market for beating fall in sales

The country's largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki is focussing on the rural market to beat the slump in the car industry.
The car major is planning to appoint 10,000 Resident Dealer Sales Executives by this fiscal to reach out to every prospective car buyer in rural areas.
Maruti Suzuki Executive Officer Mayank Pareek said that the company is doing every bit to penetrate the nascent rural market to cover up the decline in sales in major cities.
"We have devised a novel way to reach out the prospective rural customers. We appoint villagers as sales executives in the remote areas who can convince affluent villagers in local dialect to push the sales.
"The Resident Dealer Sales Executives (RDSE), as they are called, pick the prospective customer from their home and take them for a test drive. It's becoming very effective sales tool for us in this economic downturn," he said on the sidelines of the launch event of its latest model 'A-Star'.
The company, which witnessed a growth of 4 per cent over the last year, has seen 83 per cent growth in its rural market share. "The contribution of rural market in our sales was just 5 per cent. Now it has grown to 10 per cent with our concerted efforts in the rural marketing," Pareek said.
The company is also intensifying its 'ghar ghar mein Maruti' campaign to market the car at panchayat level.
"We are selecting influential people of village panchayats like sarpanch, teachers, doctors and other local leaders for being our brand ambassadors. This scheme is working for us as one car sold in a village is bringing many more rural customers to our fold," he said.
Apart from that, the company is also eyeing export market in a big way. The newly launched A-star will be the company's largest exported car in next two years. "We are planning to export around 1.5 lakh Maruti A-star cars annually by fiscal 2009-10, keeping 50,000 cars for Indian roads. This year, we are trying to consolidate the last year's export of 53,000 cars," he said.

Source: The Hindu