Entertainment
In the fast lane
The streets of Kathmandu are crammed with sheer numbers of cars, motorbikes and scooters honking away at each other.Shaleen Shah
The streets of Kathmandu are crammed with sheer numbers of cars, motorbikes and scooters honking away at each other. As the urban myth goes, the total length of all vehicles put end on end is greater than the cumulative length of all the roads of the city. Year by year, this number is only increasing. In fact, the total number of registered cars, Jeeps and vans more than doubled in the past fiscal year, from 10,528 to a brow raising 21,647.
Only a few decades ago, there were only a handful of well-known automobile brands in Nepal. Today, new auto brands are launched every few years. In such a rapidly changing market, crowded with myriad brands and products, what role does the reputation of a brand play in raising its appeal with the customers? How do established brands maintain their momentum and how do new brands penetrate the market?
Well established brands have a competitive edge in the market because of their reputation, however, this does not necessarily mean that they don’t face challenges. When a new brand enters the market and offers unique features, older brands rev up their products as well as marketing in order to avoid falling behind. “Living up to a brand’s established reputation is a challenge,” says Karun Shakya from CG automobiles, “Each brand or product has its forte. For example, Suzuki offices have excellent sales service and infrastructure, whereas its products offer higher mileage and ease in maintenance. Likewise, other products and brands may have other aspects in which they specialize in.”
According to Shakya, advertising and marketing is as important as product quality. Shital Dahal seconds this argument. “A brand cannot survive solely by creating good products.” Dahal points out, “They have to sell it too. Advertising sways people’s attitudes people towards products. Often-times, a creative newspaper advertisement may generate greater sales than a superior product. In this industry, using creative marketing and advertisement strategies is one of the biggest challenges. Without it, companies are likely to collapse.”
Conventional wisdom would state that top brands largely dominate the market whereas newer ones quickly become obsolete. After all, would people buy new products when there are already trustworthy ones in the market? The answer is, yes. Countless automobile brands have emerged and held value in the market, despite the plethora of competitions. How do new brands establish themselves in the saturated market? Karun Shakya provided the Post with a possible explanation, “The answer can be summed up in one word—curiosity. Whenever a new player enters the market, there is a lot of anticipation. If it is of decent quality, provides something unique, and is advertised correctly, it will most likely sell.”
Skoda is a relatively new brand in Kathmandu. With other bigwigs already in the market, how did Skoda make its stand? It is necessary to scrutinize Skoda’s quirks in order to reveal the answer. “Skoda is primarily known for its luxury automobiles—chiefly sedans and SUVs,” says Bikash Bajagain, assistant manager of marketing at MAW Enterprises, “Luxury, comfort and safety are Skoda’s strong suits. In fact, when it comes to luxury vehicles in Kathmandu, Skoda is one of the first brands that comes to mind. These aspects helped Skoda move into the automobile industry and now, even though it is not one of the leading brands, its products are much sought after.”
Like Skoda, other brands are continually penetrating into the automobile industry whereas well established brands are racing to maintain the status quo. But in this ever changing market, which is a bubbling soup of brands and products—both old and new, how does one select confidently select a vehicle which would suit one’s needs? There is no clear answer, but there is a logical approach to it.
Recently, a Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV ran over Star Trek actor Anton Yelchin, pinning him down to his mailbox and killing him. The distressing part is this—the SUV was his own. Yelchin climbed out of the vehicle, thinking he had shifted its gear to Park. Due to a defect in the vehicle, the SUV did not adequately alert the actor that it was still in gear and allowed him to exit without any warning. Now, when it comes to SUVs, Jeep is the first company that comes to mind. In fact, SUVs have been unofficially renamed as “jeeps” in the same way that the phrase “search” has been replaced by “google”—a courtesy of the Jeep’s leading products. However, this led to Anton Yelchin’s death—a defect in one of Jeep’s products.
Coming back to the question—how does one select an automobile from the variety of options that are available? Is it wise to experiment with newer brands which offer novel and exciting features? Taking everything into account, including the Jeep incident, is it safe to assert that products are only as good as the engineers and contributors who created it. Big brands may hire skilled employees and as a result, create superior products, but this might not always be the case. Thus, it is important to closely scrutinize the product itself, but not necessarily the brand or the advertising.