1.

Summary:
The case talks about the car Nissan LEAF: Leading, Environmentally Friendly, Affordable,
Family car. It is an electric vehicle, when released, it was one of the world’s toughest auto
markets. This zero-carbon emissions car was believed to be a high-risk gamble. Unlike other
car companies at the time, that focused more on hybrid cars, Nissan put all its resources to
develop a purely electric car, and if it succeeded, it would have first mover advantage.
Experts had opposing views on the success of the LEAF on the market, but the CEO went
with his vision. He not onlt wanted to make a first of its kind innovative 5-seater sedan, he
also wanted to make affordable and attractive. It was a very technologically advanced car
with the best IT integrations and easy access across devices.
Germany was also not an easy market to compete in. It was home to world’s leading car
makers- BMW, Daimler Benz and Volkswagen. In 2009 the German government also
released detailed plans to support the revolution of electric cars which worked very well in
favour of the company. A few other limitations for Nissan were the question of willingness
of consumers to buy a car that did not have a readymade charging system, in addition to
that the avid loyalty of German customers to German made cars. The marketing director,
speculated tha the real issue would be the fears and scepticisms of trying new products.
Marketing mix for Nissan (as mentioned in the case) summarised:
1. Product: The world’s first purely electric and affordable electric 5-seater sedan car
2. Price: 22,998 Euros (without 19% VAT) + 4,998 Euros (without 19% VAT) = 33,315
Euros
3. Place: A system 620 dealers - main dealers, secondary dealers and authorized repair
stations.
4. Promotion: Rather than going the traditional route, they took up a digital
communication strategy and worked on dealership relations and collaborations.

2. Financial Objectives
• The main objective for the Nissan leaf was to sell 2,000 units in Germany in the first
year of operation. The authorised marketing budget for the same was 2.5 million
Euros. The Marketing Director of Nissan Germany had been assigned an
exceptionally high budget when the sales objective was just 2,000 units. Any other
Nissan car had 2.5% of Sales allocated to marketing/promotion functions while this
car had double this amount at 5%.

3. Non-financial objectives
a. Brand objective: As mentioned before, the German public is fiercely loyal
towards German made cars. Nissan had to make a place for itself in a market
where 50% of it was occupied by German made cars. They had just a 1.5%
market share and in order to sell 2000 units in one year, they had to beat the
competition and make a better place for themselves, the boom to 3% market
share definitely needed to be topped off. The main aim was to make Nissan a
 household name in Electric cars and highlight its numerous benefits over the
conventional cars.
b. Internet based objectives: The internet-based campaigns focused of a lot of
objectives. Through some research Nissan found that it was the German women
that purchased more than 52% of all new vehicles & influenced in more than 80%
of all automobile sales. More than 68% of all women used the Internet to
research product information online, hence it became important to give the LEAF
a dedicated and well-made German based website to make access to information
significantly easy. They were well aware that the Internet played an important
role in the marketing of hybrid cars and he felt that it would be crucial for the
LEAF as well as people would go to the website to find out about the car and the
concept of charging their car with electricity, the people who are comfortable
using the internet and technology will also be more comfortable with the idea of
electric cars. There would also be extensive internet-based marketing and
communications for the LEAF.

4. Customer objectives
a. Attracting new customers: Th central focus was to draw attention to the new car
and increase awareness among the customers about a never seen before product.
LEAF was the world’s first mass produced electric car launched by Nissan in an
unfamiliar and challenging German Market. In addition to that it is a family car, a 5-
seater sedan at an affordable price and that made is stand out among other electric
cars in the market. Most of the cars were leased and purchased on financial plans a
majority were company cars - seen as a status symbol and thus employees were
used to driving luxury cars. In order to attract a new set of customers, Nissan had to
transform the loyal drivers and users if the of powerful “status-symbol” cars of
Germany to become the owners of a smaller, less powerful green company car with
advanced technology and a degree of unfamiliarity.

b. Retaining existing customers: The “Nissan Revival Plan” revealed that the monetary
woes were the results of lack of sense of urgency & lack of customer orientation.
Since German car users tend to be loyal, merely by keeping these consumers happy
and satisfying customer needs Nissan can create loyal customers and successfully
retain the same. Since battery charging was a concept that had never been used in
Germany before, Nissan had to work on installing a large number of accessible and
well-placed charging stations for the convenience of the customers. This was to
address a valid but irrational fear that the users would be stranded in the middle of
the road if their battery died.

5. Strategic Objectives
a. Targeting (segmentation): The case here involved a large number of different types
of segments. Firstly, it was between the 2 type of car buyers: Private buyers and
company cars. The private buyer segment was larger but the focus was on both. The
other type of segmentation was based on the lifestyle and behaviour of car owners.
Another important segmentation type was based on gender mainly focused on
women for shorter range drives for doing household work. Another one there were
the Nissan buyers and non-buyers, since there was a very high degree of brand
 loyalty in Germany, the focus of this segment naturally was on the buyers. Lastly,
there was geographic segmentation based on population density of the areas. The
underlying common factor under all of this was simply the fact that this was a family
sized affordable sedan made for a typical middle-income, middle-aged customer.

b. Positioning: The company understood that Nissan in Germany needed the

positioning to be defined based on the target segments: middle-aged buyers seeking
reliability, safety and value; singles look for individuality and personality; families ask
for functionality, space and reliability; while women expected a combination of all
factors plus value. The different features of the leaf were to be presented in such a
way that the car seemed to cater to the distinct need of the segments in a complete
way.