Honda to concentrate only on premium variants

Honda launched the new WR-V in India yesterday. The Jazz-based crossover is available in only two trims – S and VX and is packed with all the premium features. This is an indicative of Honda India’s shifting strategy to do away with entry-level variants across its product line-up. The Japanese manufacturer wants to shift its focus towards establishing itself as a premium brand.

Honda has always been looked upon as a premium brand in India, and hence the consumer finds it difficult to accept anything lesser than premium products from Honda. But lately, Honda shifted its priority to small cars, like the Amaze and Brio, and lost a bit of the premium touch that Honda is usually associated with. Some of the trim levels in Honda’s product lineup are low on features in order to achieve lower pricing on par with the competition. But these products do not actually bring in sales for the manufacturer and in fact bring down the premium brand image of Honda. Therefore, Honda will try to reduce the entry-level variant of its product and limit the number of variants in its line-up.  

According to the manufacturer, the premium association is a combination of products and customer experience. So offering the products with more features and specification is one way to boost the premium branding. As far as the customer experience is concerned, Honda will develop a new customised intelligence system at the dealership level. New marketing and management approach with the help of digitalization facility to establish a customer-oriented service would be the primary move towards enhancing the customer experience.

Apart from all this, Honda is also considering the prospects of introducing the HR-V in India soon, which will be positioned below the CR-V. There are a lot of customer and dealer requests for the Civic as well, along with the HR-V, and Honda is evaluating both the cars for the Indian market. The HR-V and Civic are important products for the carmaker and could help win back the premium brand image of Honda in India.

The Japanese carmaker also targets a domestic sale of two lakh units for next few years and looks on to increase its market share in Indian by 10 per cent. Honda also asserts that it is ready for the new safety and emission norms introduced in India along with alternative fuel technologies.