Friday, May 2, 2008

Nissan: a new angle to drive sales


“Now you can drive with a bird's-eye view.”

Nissan introduced the idea of a new sort of technology – the Around View Monitor – that can be set up on cars. Using four separate cameras, the monitor displays and image of the vehicle from above and this helps the driver to visually confirm the vehicle’s relation to the lines around the parking space. With this new technology, the driver can now position the vehicle for parallel parking or park the car in a smart way with ease.

Their idea of this new technology was good, and made the introduction effective because they went and identified a consumer need, developed a ground-breaking means of addressing it, and then communicated the result in a compelling, easy-to-understand way that also leaves the customer intrigued by the product and feeling good about the company.

They asked questions that would appeal to their target demographic segmentation group by asking questions such as:
“Have trouble seeing the curb or worried about scraping another vehicle as you parallel park your van? No problem. Just fire up the AVM and breathe a sigh of relief as you glide right into that tight parking space.”

However, there may be cases that however effective advertisements may be, the product would not be popular if the product itself did not sufficiently/adequately match the speculations that the advertisements promoted. In the case for Nissan, they had many features that would satisfy their customers. The encouraged customers to use the product by promoting three main features of the new AVM system:
1. Easy-to-understand
The birds-eye view makes it easy for the driver to position the vehicle for parallel parking. The front/rear view enables the driver to simultaneously confirm the front or rear of the vehicle.
2. Easy-to-use
By displaying the rear view and front-side view simultaneously, the driver can easily confirm the two most worrisome areas; the rear and front assist side of the vehicle.
3. Easy-to-see
The super-wide angle/high resolution camera creates a clear image after conversion to show the virtual image (described below)

However, as a customer that probably does not fit Nissan’s group of demographic segmentation, I do not find this feature very appealing, but this is only my opinion.
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