Dealer Expansion Key to Nissan Power 88 Success

TOKYO - Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn met with customers and staff at a Tokyo dealership last week, using the occasion to accentuate plans for a stronger global showroom network ahead.

A restructuring of the Tokyo dealer network last year helped to boost slumping market share, and Nissan intends to replicate the strategy globally as part of its mid-term plan.

"The growth is going to be the greatest in the emerging markets this is where we are going to add a lot of locations. In fact, this is going to be a record year in terms of adding locations with more than 700 planned this year," said Ghosn.

"We are going to have to pay a lot of attention, not only to find the appropriate location, so geo-marketing is going to be very important. This is going to have to be the object of a lot of studies, analysis and pay careful attention because it is a big investment."

Nissan will see its largest annual increase of dealer locations this year as well as a string of 10 new product launches filling showrooms with models and customers.

Global sales hit a record in the last business year, and Executive Vice President for global sales, Takao Katagiri, says part of the dealer expansion strategy will utilize geo-marketing, or geographical intelligence, to decide new showroom locations.

"There are skilled dealers and less skilled dealers. In order to reach a more global level, we identify which countries and dealers are strong, as it's always a case of evaluating the variation," explained Katagiri.

"We provide direct support to the less skilled dealers. There are many levels of this that we address globally to raise the bar."

During the visit, the CEO also met with top dealers in the Tokyo area and presented selected customers the keys to their new cars.

For some customers, the CEO moment underscored increasingly personalized service, aimed at making the Nissan dealer experience executive class.

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