Marketing Research: Tata Group's Zest Sedan Launch Strategy

This marketing research report investigates the launch of Tata Group's Zest Sedan, focusing on its marketing strategies and target market selection. The report begins with an executive summary and table of contents, providing an overview of the research. It then delves into the introduction, discussing the company's products and the specific focus on the Zest Sedan. The report explores the target market, population, sampling frame, and sampling approaches, including cluster sampling. It analyzes the effectiveness of the chosen approach and provides recommendations for improving the company's branding and marketing strategies. The research highlights the importance of understanding consumer behavior, particularly among the youth market. The report emphasizes the need for the company to adapt to market trends, improve product design, and refine its marketing strategies to increase sales and market share. The report concludes with a discussion of the challenges and opportunities facing Tata Motors in the competitive automotive market.

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Marketing Research
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Executive Summary
This assignment has looked into the marketing research of Tata Group’s launch of Zest Sedan.
After many years the company has launched two new products Zest Sedan and Hatchback Bolt
and they want to capture the market. With the discussion of the population and target group for
the research the young market was selected as the suitable alternative for the research. The
researcher has decided to use the approach of cluster sampling for the research as it will take into
consideration the different clusters of the population such as age, gender, income level and the
places in which they are living. The particular approach was selected as the researcher will be
able to take care of the individual clusters which will help the company to cater to the needs of
the target market individually. It has been found out that the company officials are also looking
for innovative ways to improve their design and launch products more frequently to increase
their sales and profit. The approach will be effective for the research as the company will be able
to increase their branding with required responses from the survey conducted in the population.

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Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction...........................................................................................................................3
1.1 Target Market............................................................................................................................4
1.2 Population..................................................................................................................................5
1.3 Sampling Frame.........................................................................................................................7
1.4 Sampling Approach...................................................................................................................9
1.5 Effectiveness of the approach..................................................................................................11
1.6 Recommendation.....................................................................................................................12
1.7 Conclusion...............................................................................................................................13
Reference.......................................................................................................................................14
Appendices....................................................................................................................................16

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1.0 Introduction
Tata Motors, a member of the Tata Group, is an Indian multinational automotive
manufacturing company. The products of the company include vehicles such as passenger cars,
trucks, buses, sports cars, vans, coaches, construction equipments and military vehicles. This
paper will focus on the marketing strategy of the Tata Sedan Zest. It is a non luxury sedan car
which was launched in India in 2014. In the course of this assignment population, sampling
method and approach of methods will be described to know the whereabouts of this particular
car brand's growth. As the company is popular and well-known, so the marketing strategy of this
brand must be good to catch the market trend (Salati, 2014).
Tata Zest is one among the sedan produced by the company in 2014. This particular car is a
part of Tata’s Falcon Program on the basis of the previous platforms on which other cars such as
Manza and Vista were built. The Zest is available in both the versions of petrol and diesel and
available in the international markets too. The unique petrol engine was designed to keep a check
on the fuel consumption and power performance. it is also available in an attractive price with a
refreshing interior and exterior design. Dawar and Arora (2016) have mentioned that in the study
of present days, Market Model Method is used to estimate the cumulative abnormal returns in a
90- day period of the launch of Tata Zest on the stock prices of Tata Motors Ltd.
Fig: Company logo
Source: (Tatamotors.com, 2017)

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1.1 Target Market
Alternative marketing strategies are useful in targeting specific age groups,
neighborhoods, ethnic communities or low literacy families with special messages. Nielsen and
Wilhite (2015) has mentioned in their article, The rise and fall of the ‘people's car’: middle-
class aspirations, status and mobile symbolism in ‘New India’ that when the Indian car
manufacturer Tata Motors introduces its new car there was an assumption that it would have
powerful impact on the target market but it did not go accordingly. The reason was not its
mediocrity or that it was unaffordable but it was argued that the penetration in the lower
designation of the powerful strata of the identifiable objects prohibited it from hitting the desire
of the consumers.
The company has boosted up for a restoration in their passenger vehicle space with the
backing of an aggressive refurbish plan (The Hindu, 2014). Although, the two cars Bolt and Zest
were supposed to be the comeback cars of the company. Unfortunately the sales reports clearly
reflected that these two has tremendously failed to attract the buyers. The sale of Bolt was 72
units while the sale of Zest was 2006 units which were much less as compared to Maruti Suzuki
DZire and Honda Amaze. Tata Bolt being a competitor of Maruti Suzuki Swift and Hyundai i10
could not even come close to their figures in terms of selling.
It can be recommended that they can come out with new features to rework on their
branding or marketing strategies to bring back the customers. The company uses the
strategy of giving discounts each month and their special promotion for the specific vehicles is
their strong pricing strategy. They also use the dealership method for distributing their products.
To improve their sale they have to make better products and work on improving the marketing
strategy. Tata Group is also considered as a feasible alternative to the automobile market leaders

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Maruti and Hyundai. The company should pay attention to penetrate the market in the two-
wheeler category rather than remaining stuck in the passenger vehicle sector as it is a potential
and unexplored market. They have a strong presence in the Asian market but need to expand
their base in European and US markets.
Fig: Market share of the automobile companies
Source: (Tatamotors.com, 2017)
1.2 Population
Population in research study is the group of individuals selected from the general
population with common characteristics for several reasons such as response to a problem or risk
of a potential problem. As it was mentioned by Chatterjee (2015) in his article, A study of
consumer behaviour towards premium passenger car segment in Uttar Pradesh in post

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liberalization era, that the production and consumption of automobiles in the Indian market has
both economic and political value. Therefore the population for the research study on Zest Sedan
has to be selected carefully. After the liberalization phase, the automobile market in India was in
a growing stage with the inflow of various types of cars in the market to cater to the needs of the
Indian population. This specific population is progressively more open to the elements of world
automobiles and wishes to get the best in terms of buying a car. The officials of the company are
well aware of the problems faced by the Tata group and decide to execute a proper plan for
overcoming the threat. The company is planning to target the youth and also focus on the rural
population by adopting the segmented marketing strategies to achieve the target.
It can be recommended that the company should focus only on the urban population
because there is no chance of success in the rural areas. As the income scale of the rural
population is comparatively lower than the urban population therefore their first priority will be
to meet the necessity rather than buying the luxurious car. If the selected population for the
research study is youth, then the company will have to read their pulse by portraying the Tata
product at the youth festivals, campuses and IT parks (Rao 2016). The young population is more
interested in trying out new cars that penetrate the market therefore the company will have a
potential increase in sale by targeting the specific population. With the new product targeting the
youth, the company will be able to compete with Hyundai’s i10 Grand and WagonR and Celerio
of Maruti Suzuki. By selecting the specific population it became convenient for the company to
foresee the desire of the customers and result in the development of an enhanced and
revolutionary product.

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Fig: types of research population
Source: (McQuarrie 2015)
1.3 Sampling Frame
A sampling frame is the main source from which the sample for the research study is
withdrawn. The sampling frame is a part of population who can be used as sample for the
benefits of the research. It was mentioned in the article Sampling in Interview-Based
Qualitative Research: A Theoretical and Practical Guide by Robinson (2014) that sampling
is the centre of the collecting qualitative data for the research methods. The sampling frame takes
into account the sample universe, sample size, sample strategy and sample sourcing.

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For the particular research study on Tata Zest Sedan, the youth market was selected as
population for the research study. But the whole youth group cannot be used in the research
study. The sample should be selected from the total population on the basis of universe, size,
strategy and sourcing. The sample universe is the total youth group who are targeted by the
company for the procurement of the new product. The universe of Zest Sedan is the young group
in all those places where the company sells its products. From the universe, the sample size is
collected which refers to the number of observations in a sample. For this research study on Tata
Zest Sedan, as the whole population is the youth group therefore the sample size will be based on
the age and the income level. For instance, Tata Zest Sedan can target the growing urban middle
class which includes the young working professionals in urban areas. The sample strategy is the
plan that is put forward to make sure that the sample used in the research corresponds to the
population from where the sample was drawn (Bhatia 2013). Therefore, for making the correct
research strategy, it is important to be attentive towards the organizational vision and make a
mission statement accordingly. In this way the company’s current standing will be assessed
which will be helpful in listing down the necessary success factors. A strategy can be developed
such as improving the branding or introduce new products or revise the pricing strategy to get
hold of the new market. Sample sourcing can be the space from where the sample is drawn for
instance, in this particular research; the sample is sourced from a wide range of urban young
population.
It can be recommended that the sampling frame should be the young working
population from the urban areas who have a passion for new automobiles in the market as
well as able to afford and maintain the Zest Sedan.

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Fig: Research population
Source: (Brown 2016)
1.4 Sampling Approach
Different approaches are used in the process of selecting sample from the population so
that by studying the sample the outcome might be generalized back to the selected population.
There are different types of sampling technique such as random sampling, stratified sampling,
cluster sampling, multistage sampling and systematic random sampling. In the article A
Comparison of Different Online Sampling Approaches for Generating National Samples,
Heen, Lieberman and Miethe (2014) had stated that online surveys provide a new and evolving
method for measuring public opinion on a local, national and international level. In comparison
to the traditional approaches of survey, online surveys are better in terms of speed, efficiency and
utilize lesser amount of costs in data collection. For the research on Tata Zest Sedan, the

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alternative research approaches can be random sampling or cluster sampling or stratified
sampling.
Palinkas et al. (2015) mentioned in his article Purposeful Sampling for Qualitative
Data Collection and Analysis in Mixed Method Implementation Research that purposeful
sampling is used in the process of qualitative research for identification and selection and
selection of cases which are rich in information and related to the interest of the instances. But
for the case of Zest Sedan random sampling will take into consideration the requirements of each
member of the young population where there is a chance of each member to be selected. In case
of cluster sampling the researcher will divide the young population on the basis of age, gender
and income scale that is the population will be divided into separate clusters. Among those
clusters, the researcher can conduct an analysis on the data received from the sampled clusters.
Similarly, in stratified sampling the researcher will also divide the population into separate
groups which are known as strata. A probability sample is done after the process of separation
into groups (Jacobs 2015).
It can be recommended for the case of Zest Sedan that the researcher can use the
approach of cluster sampling. This will allow the researcher to select sampling units from the
population. It will be a better option for the particular study because the clusters such as the
gender, age and income level of the young group are easily available when the total population
cannot be accessed. The population can also be divided into clusters of those places where the
product of Tata is going to be launched.

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Fig: Cluster sampling
Source: (Marana 2017)
1.5 Effectiveness of the approach
Acharya et al. (2013) has mentioned in Sampling: Why and How of it? that a sample is
a subset of population, selected so as to be representative of the larger population. For the case
study on Tata Zest Sedan, the cluster sampling is used. This approach is going to be effective as
the different clusters can be easily identified in the population. Various clusters in the population
of young group are their age, gender, income level and the cities where the new product will be
launched. The researcher will easily gather data pertaining to the clusters mentioned above.