Japanese Marketing Vs Indian Selling
I had my apprehensions when I chose to write on this topic. This was primarily because one can go wrong while writing such an article as one has the tendency of following only what one thinks without having a bird’s eye view of the entire picture. Also one tends to prove his thought with the examples which are there in the mind at that point of time. Probably they are just exceptions & not the reality & this was the primary reason for all my doubts. Now that I have clarity, in fact I am confident that the article will give a brief insight on the difference between the two major operational processes & the examples will make it clear.
Selling, by definition means to sell the products manufactured by a company. It is the third last step in the total marketing process. Marketing means the entire process of knowing the customer needs till satisfying them in a profitable way. The difference lies in the way the process is oriented. Selling is totally sales oriented but marketing is totally customer oriented, starting from the customer & ending on him as well.
The example to be highlighted, & the one I am fond of & appreciate personally is the automobile example, the segment being in question the four wheeler.
e.g.: Honda Vs Maruti
Honda launched its City brand in 1997.
At that time Maruti had almost 8 Brands in the market, with Honda having only 1. Come 2005 & Honda changed its City model almost overnight. The long sleek model was replaced by the short & much trendy sports model even after the entire change, to everybody’s amazement, the sports model was selling like hot cake.
But it was not overnight that the company had closed the old model line & replaced it with the new model. It must have taken them thousands of man hours of data gathering, research, segment insights, analysis & feedback to come to the conclusion that the new model would work. This was not at all magic that the company gained in the process. It was pure marketing process followed honestly & with dedication.
On the other hand, our own MUL (Maruti Udyog Ltd) came out with models on models just to increase sales. Now one may say that MUL wanted a breakthrough in many segments & thus 13 models. But there is a limit to which one can enter or create segments. This depends on how deep & broad a company wants to be on its product portfolio. It seems Maruti wants to be everything to everyone at the same time. But a classic statement in marketing is that “if you try to be everything to everyone at the same time that you would be no one to anyone “.
The other logic which people might give is that MUL still is no. 1 in sales. This is a very good logic but if a company is the largest manufacturer of cars in India, with restrictions on MNC’s with a view to protect the local companies, this logic fails.
Moral: Japanese Marketing is way ahead of Indian selling & would overtake it in the long run. Remember, how Japanese automobile companies overtook & ruined US majors in the 80’s.
Gurdeep Singh Raina
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