NEWS
Mazda won't overtake Holden this year
Japanese brand says it's more focussed on top end of mainstream market than outright salesMazda was Australia's second most popular vehicle brand in the first quarter of 2014, but expects Holden to remain runner-up to Toyota in the new-vehicle sales race overall this year.
And it believes the Mazda3 (pictured) can reclaim the title of Australia's most popular new car it lost last year to Toyota's Corolla, but says it's more interested in selling profitable models than sales leadership.
"I don't know that we'll knock off Holden this year," Mazda Australia Managing Director Martin Benders told motoring.com.au.
"They've still got business to do with Commodore and they're getting aggressive with models like Colorado, so they're not going to go down without a fight and they need to hold a base."
To May this year, Mazda lies within 2000 sales of Holden and less than 3000 sales ahead of Hyundai in fourth, and will this year sell more than 100,000 vehicles for the third consecutive time – a six-figure mark that Hyundai expects to hit for the first time this year.
But the Japanese brand says it's more focussed on the longer-term profitability of attracting a stronger level of repeat and private buyers to mid-range and high-grade vehicles, rather than sheer sales volume and promoting entry-level pricing.
While about 80 per cent of Hyundai's and Toyota's small-car customers buy base models – as was the case with the previous Mazda3 – up to 80 per cent of new Mazda3 buyers are now purchasing mid-range Maxx variants or above.
And of the mainstream volume brands, Mazda has long had the highest ratio of private buyers in the Australian industry at around 80 per cent – a figure only Toyota comes close to.
"Toyota and us are streets ahead in terms of share of private buyers," said Benders, who pointed out there are two distinctly different types of private buyers.
"If you look at all of the buyers in any segment and take non-premium, there's a heap of buyers in there that just buy reliable and safe and what have you, and they're going to find Toyota appealing because it's a stable, consistent brand.
"But not everyone buys on entry-level sticker price. There are just as many people looking for the best car they can afford to buy and we want to get those people. We're trying to defend our position which is the brand of choice for the private buyer."
The local Mazda chief said the relatively small Japanese car-maker was now in a position to reap dividends from its investment in a range of new models while its competitors tightened their belts during the global financial crisis.
Mazda Australia, which has long been a role model within the Mazda world in terms of customer satisfaction and market share (9.6 per cent), believes it can better target buyers of high-spec models without sacrificing the volume of entry-level vehicle sales.
"We've spent a lot of money on upgrading our products, unlike a lot of others who've battened down the hatches during the GFC.
"We already have a share of the market that almost dictates where Mazda can be [globally] and we don't want to walk away from that share.
"We're trying to position our cars as better cars in the non-premium space. You're getting a car that really is almost as good as a premium [model] in the non-premium [price] space.
"We think we've got pretty good products but we can't just say we're premium and expect customers to believe us," he said.
"In the end you've got to do a lot of other things right to get customers along on that journey. It's about product and customer relations."
Apart from attempting to generate the kind of emotional appeal that attracts buyers of luxury cars, Benders said Mazda would continue to "take price off the agenda" by resisting advertising prices of entry-level models like many of its mainstream competitors.
"If you've got the right product and you do the right thing in other places – the customer experience, make sure the dealers are right, make sure the supply is right, because a lot of things that drive you to price is over-supply, and we've seen that with a few brands...
"Hyundai is still very much trying to improve their credibility in terms of quality of the car, but they still use price to get people in the door and I think we need to get away from that.
"Honda's a good one. If you look at their pricing on Jazz, I don't know what Honda's strategy is. Sometimes they have a premium price, then they bring out Jazz and they go for the doctor at $14,990.
"The only time we've gone aggressively with price was really with the last Mazda3 shortly after we launched, but the first Mazda3 I don't think we advertised a price through the first half of the model cycle.
"Premiums [brands] don't go out there and slap a sticker price on a car and say 'come in and buy one of these', so we want to do the same thing in the non-premium segment and that requires a bit of discipline.
"We haven't advertised a price on CX-5 yet and that's still doing quite well."
Indeed, the CX-5 remains Australia's top-selling SUV this year, while the Mazda3 has so far out-sold the Corolla – despite a slightly higher starting price of $20,490 plus on-road costs. Most small cars, including the Corolla, are priced from under $20,000.
Benders stressed that Mazda's upmarket push would not bring with it price increases, as new Mazda Motor Corporation chairman Seita Kanai suggested would occur at a global level recently, due to the fierce competition among more than 50 brands in a relatively small market of 1.1 million new vehicles annually.
"We don't have a desire to price ourselves out – with a nine or 10 per cent market share you can't do that – but what we can do is move our brand more solidly into what you would call the aspirational or more desirable part of that space.
"What that means is that people who are more aligned with what cars can offer and those people tend to buy the upper end of your range.
"We will have cars at the right price point but we'll focus on selling the car, not the price. We just don't price to be the major focus.
"We're not talking about walking away from share or going backwards, and we can still sell down to people who buy cars as commodities.
"But if we can still do those sorts of volumes and sell Maxx and above and get price off the agenda – that's what we see as a sign of success.
"I think the Mazda3 has the credentials to be number one but it's not our be-all goal in life. We want to sell good volume and a good model mix."
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Written byMarton Pettendy
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