Opinion Change your car ever so often?
The automobile is an adults ultimate aspirational toy.
-
Share -
-
-
The automobile is an adults ultimate aspirational toy. People use it to stamp their differentiation. Look at how musician John Lennon expressed his anti-war philosophy in 1965. He paid £2,000 to a Dutch team of gypsy artists to paint his thoughts in his Rolls Royce. Automobiles have inspired several artist painters. On the 100th birthday of the automobile in 1986,pop icon artist Andy Warhol was commissioned by DaimlerChrysler Corporation,Mercedes Benz and BMW to paint a series about cars. BMW also had artists Frank Stella,Roy Lichtenstein and Ernst Fuchs do art cars.
But an automobile is a big ticket item. How often can consumers get designer cars painted by famous artists or afford to change their cars? Yet everyone wants to be different. Newer kinds of spendthrifts have emerged like the below 30 Digital Zappers. This generation flits from product to product and they influence every purchase made in the home. The major perpetrator to disrupt market rules with recurrent newness is the mobile phone. It took the landline several decades to change functionality,design and aesthetics. Todays tech-savvy mobile phone has not just minituarised itself,it has collapsed many industries into a single device in the palm of the consumers hand. At home,a refrigerator spent a good 40 years with you earlier,the music system at least 15 years,while the thought of discarding a TV set was unheard of. Then Japanese and Koreans arrived to topsy turvy our belief that electric and electronic appliances vacate the trend-wagon every three to five years. If home appliances could be changed so radically,why not automobiles?
In this backdrop,auto designers would do well to re-think about how to connect to consumers changing needs. Long work hours in developing countries are making working couples spend less time with each other. Grappling to find pressure busters,people are becoming more self-indulgent,and their high spend patterns getting into diverse new areas. In the auto industry,consumers cannot change vehicles like they do phones.
Style your own car: Regular-change auto remodelling accessories could be the auto industrys quick solution to participate in the consumers frequent changing habit. Certain physical elements can be altered to change the cars appearance,without disturbing its internal master engineering. These could be the bumper or steering wheel,bonnet,wheel cap,side mirror,gear holding,upholstery,among others. Remodelling accessories should never be considered as replacement of damaged features. Instead,the auto industry should promote style your own car as the contemporary new dimension that takes car owners into the quick changing paradigm.
Consumers generally keep a car for three years. For todays change mentality,thats an eternity,total frustration creeps in. Remodelling their cars will definitely perk them up. Multiple visible looks can be generated for people to use different remodelling accessories on different occasions. They need not go for superficial accessories such as crazy horn sounds,music on reverse gear or stylish hubcaps,among others. Easy-fix remodelling accessories can represent an India-centric trend: India represents only 3.5 per cent of the global automobile market. Considering its 1.2 billion population,every auto manufacturer is focusing on capturing this throbbing potential. The scope for invention using Indias unique diversity of culture,social,language,food,geography is tremendous. With the economy on the boom trend,people are looking for personal identification,status or cultural difference. By testing remodelling accessories in India,this new concept can open a new business horizon in the global market. Easy-fix remodelling accessories can redefine the service station. Creating a new dimension of activities,it can become a new revenue stream.
Remodelling accessories must be relevant to socio-behavioural clusters: Over the past decade,weve tracked Indian consumers and have identified eight socio-behavioural consumer clusters in every income group. Societys drivers are the clusters of Critical,Novelty seeker,Flamboyant,Techy and Gizmo lovers. Remodelling accessories for this group can be complex and exhibitionist,whereas for society followers,the Low key,Value seeker and Sober,they can be simple yet functional. A wide variety in each type will invite consumers of every socio-behavioural cluster to change to get out of boredom. Auto manufacturers can consider offering easy-fix remodelling accessories for at least 10 features in the car. Each feature will have four choices each for the driver and follower groups; for example,eight pieces of the rear view mirror feature. These should flaunt widely different characters to connect to these different socio-behavioural clusters of consumers. Packages can range from $200 to $2,000 for an automobile that costs about $12000.
Rapidfire change running across industries: Product planning for tomorrows vehicle can in-build design that allows easy fixing of remodelling accessories. This could start a new industry. Avoid marketing them as gadgets. Take a cue from Swatch,an oft-changing product,which was never marketed as a temporary doodad. Swatch is reputed as serious,low priced,highly aspirational,accompanying everyday lifestyle and the mood change driver of different people in the world. Remodelling accessories could be modelled after Swatch to change the automobile industrys perception where all vehicles look more or less the same. American automobiles have a Barbie doll image,Italians show off delicate women,the French ooze fashion and English cars are a royal experience. German cars reflect hardcore sophisticated engineering,the Swedes stress on safety,Japan on quality and cost efficiency,which Koreans diligently follow. This new idea showcasing diversity through remodelling accessories could acquire for India a futuristic image and be our contribution to the auto world.
Shombit Sengupta is an international creative business strategy consultant to top management. Reach him at http://www.shiningconsulting.com
-
Share
-
-
-
Share
