Infiniti focuses more on market, brand, than sales

Q: What drives you to make the transformation? What are the situations and reasons make the company need the transformation?

Johan de Nysschen:

What drives the transformation, really, is going back to this point I made earlier, that the global premium automotive market accounts for roughly 12 percent of sales by the global auto industry, but almost 50 percent of profits. And in order for the Nissan group to more effectively exploit the potential of the auto business in the future, it's clear that it also has to straddle both of these market sectors: The mainstream sector where it's very well-entrenched and very successful with the Nissan brand, but also the premium sector, where Infiniti has succeeded in occupying a strong position in United States but which we now wish to make global.

The transformation really is about the transformation of Infiniti, as previously one of the lineup of brands in the Nissan group, to becoming an own entity, and to have the breadth of product portfolio and the very clear differentiation, not only in product substance, but in brand character, from, on the one hand, the Nissan brand, and on the other, differentiation from the other premium automotive brands.

We need to cultivate the brand, to occupy all our own unique space in the premium sector, and we need to have the product portfolio, which provides the foundation, on which to build the brand pulse. The product strategy that we have outlined now till 2020, as I'd said earlier, will take Infiniti into market segments where it is not present today. It will give us broader appeal in the premium segment, and will allow us to compete more effectively. It will allow us to draw many more customers to the Infiniti brand than who are able to consider today.

And it will be a combination of products that extend the product lineup into the entry segments where we can capture these young premium consumers, as they enter the premium market, but also it will expand the Infiniti portfolio up market. So that we can develop really compelling halo effect which will add to the emotional appeal of the brand, which will give very tangible expression to the performance, characteristic which we say one of our corner stone of our brand values. So you can imagine that we will have some very emotional high performance cars in our future as well. We will have a broader range of luxury vehicles and we will continue to strengthen our current portfolio as we have just seen with the Q50.

So our growth will come from entering new market segments, appealing to a broader section of customers, and also from geographic growth as we enter new markets globally, but of course, our most important growth market that we are targeting now, number one, is China, and that is that reason why we are making this investment into products that are specific for the Chinese market, and also into manufacturing for the Chinese premium consumers.

Q: Although you have insisted that your targets are the three major German brands, but the competitors are far beyond that. It is hard to say which one is the top brand that can be only determined by the sale volume, which I think is more important than the brand. For the sales volume, when will you exceed Lexus?

Daniel Kirchert:

For any successful enterprise, they all have to concern and learn from their competitors, and there are not only 3 German brands in the whole premium auto market. But the reason we aimed at these three brands, is because their brand images have very deeply penetrated the China's market, in fact they take 78 percent market share in this country, so if we want to make any breakthrough, we have to work hard in the brand image, but we must reemphasize that we don't aim at the sales volume.

Johan de Nysschen:

I just want to add from my double respective. First of all, you are right that there are other brands that compete in the premium market other than the German three, and we certainly respect all our competitors. The reason that we have chosen to highlight the three German brands is that they are really the only three that have managed to secure the same strong global footprint and strong global positioning, all the other brands tend to be more dominant in particular markets.

And since we have stated at the beginning that our aim now is to establish Infiniti as a very strong global premium brand, it somehow for us stands to reason that we should target the three German brands those have achieved the most success in this regard. It does not mean that we ignore the other competitors, and certainly on a local-market level, we recognize that in China there are still several of the other premium players who still sell more volume than we do, and your comment that you think volume is more important than the brand, I would respectfully disagree.

For us, building brand power is more important than sales volume. Our aim is not to park an Infiniti in every driveway. Our aim is to park an Infiniti in the right driveways. By that I mean that the people who purchased an Infiniti are doing so because it is an aspirational brand but also because they are dynamic achievers who are very confident in themselves and don't seek out brands to publicize to the broader society “l(fā)ook at how successful I am”. Those things might be important, but first and foremost, they choose brands and the products as a reward for their own success, and those kind of very successful people tend to have high profiles in their local communities. And if they are the people who are seen to be associated with Infiniti because it is their automotive brand of choice, that will do a great deal.Italso further strengthen the social positioning of Infiniti as a brand, and that's why, for us, brand power is more important than volume.