Urban myths, tall tales, little white lies. We’ve all heard them. Some of us may even have told them. Tall tales and little white lies bore us to death and are as easily spotted as a llama in a supermarket. We’ve all experience the office bullshitter coming in on a Monday morning raving about the “killer weekend” he just had “partying with such and such” and “getting up to all sorts” that finally resulted in him “shagging her tits off then having to do a runner on a stolen moped from her street”. Urban myths, or urban legends as they are also known, captivate our imagination and provoke discussions ranging from the banal to the argumentative. Some have been so thoughtful and tempting that they were believed by entire nations (the spaghetti grows on trees April fools day documentary shown on UK television anyone?!?!). 50% believe them, 50% don’t. Well WankStain.be has taken the time to scientifically research the more prominent urban myths of our time and present the findings to you below…

IF YOU FART, SNEEZE AND BURP AT THE SAME TIME, YOU DIE
If you ever actually achieve this feat and survive, you would become a legend and make millions in the process.
Anyone who can perform this miracle should contact me to collect their medal.

MARLBORO PACKETS ARE SECRET KU KLUX KLAN ADVERTISEMENTS
According to legend, the red chevron design on our favourite cigarettes is a coded advert for the Klan and hiding beneath the horse motif are two hooded Klansmen. Adding further fuel to the fire, when trying very hard and reading upside down, the brand name appears to read “orobl Jew” or “Horrible Jew”.
History kicks this slanderous myth right in the testicles. The founder of the brand, Philip Morris, was no Kentuckian Hillbilly, rather an affluent Londoner. In 1902 Morris set up a corporation in New York to sell his baccy, including one brand named after a street in London, namely Marlborough. it seems the KKK never had any links with the company, preferring to burn huge crosses and gospel churches.

IF YOU SNEEZE WITH YOUR EYES OPEN, THEY WILL POP OUT
When WankStain.be contacted a top eye clinic, our myth query caused pandemonium in the wards and operating theatres. The Medical Director, Bill Boardman, without haste, was quick to clear this up.
“This is not remotely true. The eye is connected to the brain by the optic nerve, which does not stretch. Your eyes could never just ‘pop out’.” Thanks for clearing that up Bill!

SUMO WRESTLERS CAN RETRACT THEIR TESTICLES AT WILL
The Sumo Wrestling Federation of Great Britain informed WankStain.be, somewhat fittingly, that this urban legend is a load of bollocks.
The chubby wrestlers do strap their testicles tight to their body but have no need to push them inside, because they rarely get bollock injuries, with contact below the sumo belt a complete no-no.

RONALD MCDONALD HELPED FUND THE IRA
For years there has been a myth doing the rounds that executives in McDonalds were sending brown envelopes stuffed with cash to Republican organizations in Ireland, helping fund the IRA’s lethal pyrotechnic displays.
Before you can say “McLibel”, we’ll state that there is no element of truth in the tale. And if the burger barons sue, expect a rival lawsuit, claiming their Happy Meals never actually made us happy.

DRINKING YOUR OWN URINE IS GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH
Can you tell what it is yet? It’s yellow, it’s warm, it smells disgusting. That’s right – it’s your piss. There are, apparently, millions of people the world over who drink their own pee. Whether you substitute your morning brew with a hot steaming cup of urine, gargle with it or use it as refreshing eye drops, it is thought to have healing powers.
Not surprisingly, medical experts have yet to find any scientific evidence in favour of urine therapy. “Urine is one of the body’s ways of getting rid of waste products” a top urologist said. Drinking it is “both illogical and hazardous”. So any time someone invites down to the pub for warm pint of piss, just say no.

THE BRACE POSITION IS MEANT TO PRESERVE YOUR DENTAL RECORDS IN A PLANE CRASH
What do you do when the plane you’re on starts plummeting towards the ground? Lights flash on and off, someone’s briefcase hits you over the head and the old lady next to you is saying the Ave Maria. Do you haggle for last minute duty free cigarettes, or assume the brace position? According to urban myth, the “brace” is simply meant to protect your teeth so that crash investigators can easily identify your charred body and send you back to the correct home in a box.
The Civil Aviation Authority put us to rights: “The brace position was designed by a team of aviation and medical experts to offer the best protection for the majority of accidents”. Something worth remembering as you slam into a mountainside at 3,000mph.

USING YOUR MOBILE PHONE IN A PETROL STATION WILL CAUSE AN EXPLOSION
When was the last time you saw someone blow up a petrol station with a mobile? If it really were that was, people heading down the 24-hour garage for munchies and Rizla would be walking detonators. Conduct your own test. head down to the garage with mates and call each other on your mobiles. Then give WankStain.be a shout and tell us if we were right.
According to New Scientist magazine, there is an extremely small risk that pulsating microwaves in the battery could spark an explosion, but there’s a greater chance of a big bang being caused by static in your new shell suit. The ban is by over-litigious gas corporations who want to cover their backsides against even the most improbable disasters.

EIGHTY PERCENT OF HIGH RISE BUILDINGS HAVE NO 13TH FLOOR
Here’s a frightening statistic: 100% of people born on Friday 13th have died or will die at some point in their lives. It’s no wonder that triskaidekaphobia, or fear off the number 13, is the most common superstition in the world. It’s so widespread that real-estate agents find it extremely difficult to lease the 13th floor in skyscrapers.
Today, it’s estimated that 85% of high-rise buildings go straight from the 12th to the 14th floor, including Britain’s tallest building, Canary Wharf.

SWIMMING POOLS CONTAIN A SUBSTANCE THAT TURNS PURPLE WHEN IT COMES INTO CONTACT WITH URINE
Pissing in your local swimming pool is as much a part of going swimming as is dive-bombing pensioners and lovers, and diving in the shallow end. If people didn’t do it, pools wouldn’t need cleaning chemicals and chlorine companies would go out of business. However, this great tradition looked like it night come to an abrupt end when rumours started circulating that scientists had developed a substance that turned purple when someone urinated in the water.
Fear not, for while it is chemically possible to produce such a substance, it would be extortionately expensive to make, and would turn the water a lurid pink colour, putting off the great swimming public.

WEAR A HAT AND YOUR HAIR WILL FALL OUTThere’s very little you can do about going bald. which has given rise to a myriad of myths to confuse and exploit desperate men.
Lots of things can make your hair fall out – shock, genes, illness, chemotherapy, old age – but wearing a hat isn’t one of them. It’s not entirely true either that baldness is caused by excessive testosterone, and it’s false that it’s inherited solely from your mother’s male relatives. The blame lies equally with both parents and the useless genes they gave you.

A PLANE NEVER CRASHED INTO THE PENTAGON ON 11 SEPTEMBER
When best-selling French author Thierry Meyssan claimed that the US government had faked the plane crash at the Pentagon, it sent furious Yanks running for their freedom fries. Meyssan’s book, Pentagate, alleged that there was no evidence of the crash, citing lack of structural damage missing aircraft wreckage.
Notably, none of the 189 people who perished on Flight 77 came forward to support the author. The US army quickly pointed out that the Pentagon had undergone a $1bn renovation to reinforce the outer walls, preventing more of the building collapsing. However, there is still no official report on the attack, leaving conspiracy theorists to fill the gap.

A MUNCHKIN CAN BE SEEN COMMITTING SUICIDE IN THE WIZARD OF OZ
Let’s face it, if you were a 2ft tall actor with a squeaky voice, life would stink. Girlfriends would be in short supply, you’d always get splashed in the face at the urinals, and buying top-shelf magazines would be a distant dream. Movie myth follows that in the scene where Dorothy first discovers the Tin Woodsman, a suicidal munchkin can be seen hanging from a tree in the background.
We’re afraid it’s no snuff film. The small, dark shape is actually a live bird borrowed from Los Angeles Zoo, to give the studio a more realistic feel. It is a fact, though, that a munchkin was fired for threatening his wife with a diddy gun.

GOLDFISH HAVE A THREE SECOND MEMORY
All goldfish are right rude bastards. They ignore your birthday, forget you fed them, they can’t even remember your name. They just stare at you with a blank look on their faces. And their excuse? “Oh, I’ve got a bad memory”.
Don’t believe a word of it. Scientists in America have trained goldfish to swim through mazes by teaching them to memorize complex colour sequences. Their next step is to show them how to kill people who put them in bags at funfairs.

IF YOU PUT A SLEEPING PERSON’S HAND IN WARM WATER, THEY PISS THEMSELVES
On the whole, if someone is extremely drunk they’ll piss themselves whether you put their hand in warm water or not. But if you really want to see your mate in a pool of his own urine, then this is a tried and tested method.
Dr Harold Shipman: “The procedure can cause a person to relax their prostate muscles. Also, the subconscious can associate the water with going to the toilet, causing someone to pass urine. However, I consider this practice morally questionable”.

I hope that clears them all up for you now. I’ve still got some time to kill, so here’s some more myth that are absolutely, positively, government-researched as true…

If you hold your breath for 5 minutes, you’ll live forever. This ancient shaman tradition sadly died out along with the last member of the Inca tribe.

Inside every fat girl is a thin girl waiting to get out. It may sound creepy, but it’s 100% true that all fat girls have eaten a thin girl in a jealous rage at some point.

Hollywood stars don’t have toilets in their homes. All A-list celebs got for a dump on glass-topped coffee tables and usually make their servants observe the magic from below.

Wanking really does make you go blind. Half of all blind people have lost their eyesight during excessive masturbation sessions.

Nearly all French men are gay. The last official survey by the World Sex Authority confirmed that 99% of French men like it up the bum. German males followed very close behind with 88%. One German admitted: “It wouldn’t be the the first time I came behind a French man.”

Sticking a screwdriver in an electrical socket carries no risk. It has been medically proven to cure acne, prevent premature ejaculation and improve memory skills.

If you twist a policeman’s nipple, followed by a swift Chinese burn, the chaffed copper is legally obliged to let you ride in the back of his car.

According to people who have jumped to their death from the top of the Eiffel Tower, it is possible to see a small Parisian gentleman selling croissants on the way down.

All of the above are 100% true, my pretend friend Jeremy Jug-Lugs The Jew told me so. Except the one about sticking a screwdriver in a socket. Please don’t try that.

Watch the video related to sumo

First there was Sumo, the Japanese sport of heavyweight wrestling. Now, a much lighter and faster mechanical SUMO has entered the ring.

Help answer the question about sumo

Please help!

Sumo Grande: Seeding Activity to the High-end Tourist Market.

Sudeep Kumar Biswas, Alliance Business School, Bangalore.

Paper Abstract

TATA Motors has segmented, targeted, and positioned selected products according to their features and brand equity in the market. Products such as the newly launched indigo CS, Palio MultiJet, Safari Dicor, and Sumo Grande are thus positioned exclusively for sale in the high-end tourist market, that is, for fleet operations only. Bangalore being the IT hub in the country, possesses a strong market potential for automobile brands heavily promote their products in the fleet operations space, given that a large number of employees in the IT and  ITes sectors commute from home to office on a daily basis. This focus of the paper is to examine the market potential of the Sumo Grande – a repositioned product- in the commercial segment based on a product seeding approach. The findings of the paper test the market penetration strategy of the product by adopting a quantitative research methodology. The paper presents an analysis and interpretation of primary data collected through a sample survey of potential fleet operators based in Bangalore city. The research methods and business recommendations contained in the paper have been presented to executives at TATA Motors, which have been verified and approved.

Introduction

In the early 2008, TATA Motors launched its new improved product, which was a facelift of Sumo in the new version of Grande – positioned as both an SUV and a family car with. This paper focuses on designing and testing a market strategy to seed the Sumo Grande in fleet sales of the high end tourist segment. The paper, in particular, assesses the market acceptance and preference for the product among the end user segment. The location of the study is the city of Bangalore. The study aims at exploring the potential available in fleet operators segment, especially in tourist and taxi sub-segments for TATA SUMO GRANDE. The regional head office of TATA Motors in Southern region is situated in Bangalore, Karnataka, a key factor that has facilitated data collection and qualitative research based on company sources.

The objectives of the study are to:

1)       Examine the success of seeding the Sumo Grande in the commercial segment.

2)       Study the consumer perception of the TATA cars across its competitors’ products especially utility vehicles for fleet purposes.

Sampling method

Since, the number of fleet owners and the drivers in Bangalore City is very large in number, doing survey of all the members in the population would be impractical as the cost and time involved would be really high. Hence, a sample of 95 fleet operators was taken across all the categories of fleet service. This was done in order to attain an unbiased feedback about the products. The sample taken was distributed across airports, railways stations, IT industries; bus stands etc in order to avoid the chances of opinions influence by external factors which would result in an improper learning.  The group of drivers are not homogenous in nature as the opinions of drivers in each area are different according to the perception of the group of people in that location. The population is stratified into a number of non-overlapping subpopulations or strata. Hence, the sample method used here was a stratified sample method.

Data collection

The data collection was done by administering questionnaires to respondents, who in this case, were drivers of tourist fleets of utility vehicles. The objective of this questionnaire is to understand the perception of the drivers about the fleet vehicles including utility vehicles and passenger cars among all the auto manufacturers in India.

The questionnaire constituted of the following questions:

• Personal details of the respondent  (Driver)
• Perception of the best manufacturer with aspects of
  • Quality and Service
  • Value for money
• Perception of the best UV and car with respect to the following aspects:  Mileage, safety, comfort, cheaper spare parts cost, maintenance, better resale value

Scenario of Fleet operations:

Bangalore being the IT hub in the country has got a strong potential for fleet. Many IT, ITes, companies are situated in the city in various parts. The major chunk of the corporate are located in certain IT parks like ITPL – Information Technology Park Ltd, Whitefield, and Electronic city. These corporate organisations have a multitude of employees working under them. These employees commuted form their work places and to their residence. At a conservative estimate, the number of employees working in the IT and ITes industry who commute from home and office and back in Bangalore city is around 200,000 persons. This commuting service is offered by the company in two ways depending upon the convenience of the organization: either the fleet is outsourced or company owned fleets are used. Apparently, most of the information technology companies prefer for outsourcing the fleet operations to fleet operators or vendors. This is basically done in order to reduce the additional task handling activity. By outsourcing the fleet operation, the industry benefit from a reduction in overheads costs, a reduction in the data handling for large numbers of commuting employees and the fleet allotted for each employee, and no maintenance issues for the fleet operating vehicles

The Fleet operators

The fleet operators in Bangalore are high volume handling operators having even maximum of 3000 vehicles per vendor. This includes the bus, UVs, and cars. The fleet operators can be categorised in following ways:

• Vendors are functioning for single company in a single area (Location)
• Vendors are functioning for a single company in all the places where the company is located
• Vendors are functioning for more than one or two companies simultaneously

The vendors can be also classified in the following way:

• Vendors who own all their Fleet vehicles
• Vendors who have all their Fleet vehicles attached from individuals
• Vendors who further outsource a part of the fleet vehicles to small travel agencies

Hence the potential buyers of the Fleet operations vehicles (Sumo and Indicab) are:

• Mainly the Fleet operating Vendors
• Experienced drivers working for the Fleet operators
• Drivers working for other individuals who have attached the service to the vendors
• Entrepreneurs who search for new potential business

Tata Motors Sumo Grande – The Product

Tata Sumo Grande is a new generation multi utility vehicles and is a result of extensive research and development by Tata Motors Limited. This vehicle also incorporates all the well known and proven features of Tata Motors precision and advanced technology. Easy manoeuvrability and economic life cycle cost makes Sumo Grande ideal for operating in both urban as well as rural areas. This vehicle is powered by a new generation 2.2L DICOR BS-III engine which is in turn mated to a 5 speed fully synchromesh gearbox with overdrive for excellent fuel efficiency and tubeless tyres for better road holding and grip. Sumo Grande’s 2.2L DICOR engine is a refined power plant employing a sophisticated Common rail fuel system. The engine’s ECU (Electronic Control Unit), basically a 32 bit Micro-processor, controls the engine’s fuel injection, operation of the Variable Geometry Turbocharger (VGT) and other related parameters for it to perform optimally. An ergonomically designed vehicle designed that doubles up as a taxi with no extra modifications, the Sumo Grande has added features such as a collapsible power steering, central locking, power windows, highly effective HVAC for comfort, music system, state of art headlamp and rear lamps, good all-found visibility and easy access to areas of daily maintenance.

Pricing Strategy of the Sumo Grande

1. The pricing strategy of the Sumo Grande clearly reflects the product seeding operations by the marketer (Fig. 1.1). The pricing strategy also signals the arrival of a new and improved product to existing customers of the Sumo brand, in an attempt to upgrade high end users to the next generation of utility vehicle. The pricing strategy of the Sumo Grande has three components. First, in an attempt to upgrade high end users from older items in the product line, the Sumo Grande is positioned as a new and improved   product with higher ex-showroom price points than other items in the product line – the Sumo Victa, and Sumo Spacio+ – but offered at lower ex- showroom price points than the luxury segment vehicle, the TATA Safari Dicor. Second, the strategic price positioning of the Sumo Grande is aimed at filling the price gaps left open by products of competitors’ brands such as variants of Tavera and Scorpio. Third, the price points of the vehicle aim at communicating a value proposition to the buyer by targeting customers from the high end segment by offering higher value and from the lower market segments by offering better features and aspirational benefits.

Fig. 1.1 Sumo Grande: Strategic Pricing

Seeding of TATA SUMO GRANDE in high end tourist segment.

Fig.1.2 The Process for Seeding Operations.

The process for the product seeding operations is given in Fig. 1.2. It can be seen that the process closes follows the sequential steps that are present in the process of personal selling. The paper has added refinements to the process of personal selling to arrive at a methodology that is best suited to the research objectives of the study. The results of the seeding process of the product in the high end tourist market in Bangalore city led to the examination of the acceptability of the Sumo Grande among the target market based on twelve decision variables. These are analysed below and are  the shape of the vehicle, the quality of interiors, engine power and performance, mileage, body vibrations, stability at high speeds, braking effectiveness, visibility of the product on roads, vehicles seen on roads, Sumo brand association, resale value, Tata engine has low credibility, preference for other products. A factor analysis of the product seeding data collected from over 95 respondents indicates important variables that would discourage an immediate adoption of the product. The finding of the seeding process of the Sumo Grande in the high end tourist market in Bangalore city indicated that while TATA Motors is strong in passenger car fleets (Indica), the brand has witnessed weak sales in the utility vehicle fleet and with the Sumo Grande in particular. A strong competitor for TATA Motors in the utility vehicle fleet segment is Chevrolet’s Tavera, Toyota’s Innova, and Mahindra and Mahindra’s Bolero. Also, it was learned that as much as 48% of the utility vehicle fleet owned by travel operators surveyed consists of the Tavera vehicle.

Interpretation

Fig. 1.3 Fleet operator preference for the Sumo Grande vehicle

Fig. 1.4 Reasons for consumer dissatisfaction with the Sumo Grande

The fleet operator’s response from the market in Bangalore city indicated that TATA Motors has a weak presence in the fleet sales of utility vehicles. An analysis and interpretation of the survey data shown in Figures 1.3 and 1.4 serve to substantiate and corroborate this perception. The consumer survey was conducted in January 2009, which is the point of reference for assessing buyer decisions. Fig. 1.3 shows that 41 % of the respondents were not interested in the purchase of the Sumo Grande as a fleet vehicle while only 1 percent of the respondents were decided on immediate purchase. Further, a large portion of respondents preferred to defer the purchase of the product:  29 % and 20 % of those surveyed showed a preference for purchase during the last quarter of 2008-09 and during the calendar year 2009, respectively. A mere 1 % and 3 % were interested in immediate purchase and within 30 days of responding to the questionnaire. The primary reasons attributed to the sluggish fleet sales of the Sumo Grande in the tourist segment originated consumer dissatisfaction from anomalies in product design (fig. 1.4). While 41 % and 19 % of respondents surveyed cited the poor ergonomics of the body interiors and the presence of body vibrations as reasons not to purchase to purchase the Sumo Grande for fleet operations, another 16 % and 12 % of respondents stated that driving mileage and body shape were key deterrents to purchase.  6 % of those fleet operators surveyed cited engine output and performance as a dissuading factor while and the respondent size ranked stability at high speeds and ineffective braking systems and brittleness of plastic parts on an equal scale of importance.

Factor Analysis

A factor analysis on SPSS software was conducted to arrive at the structural essentials of the product seeding data set, which revealed major factors that would discourage the target segment from making a decision in favour of the product.

Table 2 Communalities

Initial

Extraction

Body Shape

1.000

.907

Interiors

1.000

.877

Power and performance

1.000

.689

Mileage

1.000

.796

Body vibrations

1.000

.787

No stability

1.000

.544

Poor braking and plastics

1.000

.652

No vehicles seen on roads

1.000

.716

Sumo brand association

1.000

.772

Resale value

1.000

.558

Tata engine has low credibility

1.000

.679

Preference for other products

1.000

.676

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

Table 3 Total Variance Explained

Component

Initial Eigen values

Extraction Sums of Squared Loadings

Rotation Sums of Squared Loadings

Total

% of Variance

Cumulative %

Total

% of Variance

Cumulative %

Total

% of Variance

Cumulative %

1

2.051

17.091

17.091

2.051

17.091

17.091

1.984

16.532

16.532

2

1.657

13.812

30.903

1.657

13.812

30.903

1.544

12.863

29.395

3

1.384

11.532

42.435

1.384

11.532

42.435

1.319

10.989

40.384

4

1.260

10.502

52.937

1.260

10.502

52.937

1.308

10.904

51.288

5

1.193

9.942

62.878

1.193

9.942

62.878

1.301

10.845

62.134

6

1.107

9.228

72.107

1.107

9.228

72.107

1.197

9.973

72.107

7

.775

6.454

78.561

8

.738

6.148

84.709

9

.684

5.698

90.407

10

.639

5.328

95.735

11

.368

3.063

98.799

12

.144

1.201

100.000

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

Table 4 Component Matrixa

Component

1

2

3

4

5

6

Body Shape

.891

-.321

.039

-.007

.083

-.034

Interiors

.865

-.303

.096

-.003

.165

-.026

Power and performance

-.198

.108

.053

-.784

.087

.113

Mileage

-.041

.010

.002

-.060

.765

.453

Body vibrations

.122

.022

-.573

.353

.043

.562

No stability

-.479

-.293

-.106

.445

-.041

.134

Poor braking and plastics

-.212

-.430

.416

.357

.143

-.319

No vehicles seen on roads

.176

.647

.080

.409

.213

-.217

Sumo brand association

.151

.782

-.100

.061

.224

-.272

Resale value

-.246

-.077

.574

.037

.389

.096

Tata engine has low credibility

-.085

-.281

-.609

-.120

.141

-.434

Preference for other products

.241

.257

.376

.059

-.524

.365

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

a. 6 components extracted.

Table 5 Rotated Component Matrix

Component

1

2

3

4

5

6

Body Shape

.948

-.049

.057

-.016

.033

-.042

Interiors

.934

-.020

.008

-.023

.033

.046

Power and performance

-.180

-.177

-.105

.039

-.769

.149

Mileage

.045

.038

.160

.094

-.095

.865

Body vibrations

.012

-.036

.826

.002

.268

.178

No stability

-.399

-.279

.075

.087

.534

.091

Poor braking and plastics

1.618E-5

-.161

-.585

.095

.515

.103

No vehicles seen on roads

.010

.815

-.009

-.116

.188

.043

Sumo brand association

-.052

.854

.066

.037

-.183

-.019

Resale value

-.107

-.040

-.475

-.184

.080

.528

Tata engine has low credibility

.014

-.082

.103

.789

-.012

-.198

Preference for other products

.068

.000

.092

-.781

-.046

-.226

Table 6 Component Transformation Matrix

Component

1

2

3

4

5

6

1

.933

.207

.194

-.162

-.069

-.131

2

-.303

.829

.178

-.303

-.309

-.044

3

.083

-.017

-.748

-.624

.027

.208

4

-.035

.267

.130

-.123

.946

.014

5

.154

.277

-.115

.429

-.013

.837

6

-.074

-.348

.584

-.541

-.063

.486

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.

Given the density and complexity of the data set, a factor analysis was conducted to isolated the structural essentials of data and arrive at influential factors working against the purchase of the Sumo Grande by the respondent size of fleet operators. The output of factor analysis is obtained by requesting Principal Component Analysis and specifying a rotation. We assume that the Eigen value of all factors as 1 or more than 1. From Table 2, the 6 factors extracted together accounts for 72.10 % of the total variance. We lost only 27.90 % of information content (72.10% is retained by 6 factors extracted out of 12 original variables). From table 5 in factor 1, shape, interiors have a high loading of 0.948 and 0.934 respectively. So factor 1 is a combination of 2 variables .This factor can be named as DESIGN. In factor 2, no vehicles seen on the road and the association of the Sumo brand have a high loading of 0.815 and 0.854 respectively. So factor 2 is a combination of 2 variables .This factor can be named as NAME AND FAMILARITY. In factor 3, body vibration has a high loading of 0.826 so factor 3 is a combination of 1 variable. In factor 4, the Tata engine is less credible and preferences for other products have a high loading of 0.789 and 0.781 respectively. So factor 4 is a combination of 2 variables .This factor can be named as LOYALTY. In factor 5, power and performance have a high loading of 0.769 .so factor 5 is a combination of 1variable.This factor can be named as POWER AND PERFORMANCE. In factor 6, driving mileage has a high loading of 0.865, so factor 6 is a combination of 1 variable. This factor can be named as ECONOMICAL. These are the six factors for which the company should focus on changes to be done, so that the Tata Sumo Grande has better sales in fleet services.

A rejuvenated marketing strategy for the penetration of the Sumo Grande in fleet sales

In a passenger car market, the competition is intense and a customer changes his or her buying decision from one product to the other in a short span because the entry of the competitors in the market with user friendly products offered at wide range of price points. Hence, marketers of passenger cars aim at reducing the gap between the product range available at the dealer showroom and the customer decision to buy.

The Prospect

Fig. 1.5 Buying Process at a TATA Motors Dealer’s Show room

The usual procedure that the buyer undergoes before the purchase of a new car is shown in Fig. 1.5. In this process, the physical and virtual distance between the buyer and the seller is high. It is imperative that the marketer shorten the buying process to reduce the distance between the buyer awareness and purchase. Three effective promotional strategies are recommended in this regard:

1. Direct marketing pamphlets, posters, and mailers to the target segment would solve the buyers’ problem of searching for information about the products and would bring him/her more closely to the purchasing stage.

2. Present a competitor analysis of products with their nearest competitors and portray the unique selling proposition to the buyer via promotions in the media.

3. Identify and prominently highlight features during road shows on which aspect the buyers would compare the products (price, safety, comfort level, and fuel economy)

The Prospect

Fig. 1.6 The shortened buying process of Sumo Grande

The shortened buying process is seen in Fig. 1.6. The above strategies can serve to facilitate the buyer to easily pass to the purchase decision stage in the buying process and covert the realization need for a car to an early purchase. This would strategically reduce the time interval for the dealer to get confirmed customer orders at the showroom and help to speed up conversion rates all around. Reducing the time interval and decision distance between the awareness stage and the product trail stage can significantly aid the process of closing a sale and even result in a stronger penetration of the Sumo Grande in the fleet segment.

Conclusion

The market dynamics of the automobile fleet sales of utility vehicles in Bangalore city indicates a strong preference among fleet operator (the tourist and taxi segments) for competitor products of TATA Motors, viz., Tavera, Innova, and Bolero utility vehicles. The research indicates that while TATA Motors hold a strong market position in the passenger car category (Tata Indica) for fleet sales, the market presence of the auto major in the lucrative utility vehicle category for fleet sales is weak. A survey of the end user indicates that the introduction of the Sumo Grande –a new and improved product – has been met with conservative optimism. The principal factor influencing a sluggish preference for the Sumo Grande is to be found in product design and comfort of interiors. This is despite the fact the TATA Motors has positioned the price points of the product accurately. This has been arrived at by positioned the price points of the products strategically in price gaps left open by competitors brands. The market dissatisfaction presented a strategy for improving the conversion rates for sale of the product resulting in the penetration of the Sumo Grande in the fleet operations market in Bangalore city.

The author gratefully acknowledges the inputs of Dr. Sudarshan Seshanna and TATA Motors in the preparation of this paper.

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