Tata Nano

When the Indian conglomerate TATA announced the Nano in 2008, it promised an automotive
revolution equivalent to the Model T. The $2,200 Nano would be priced at half the cost of its
competition, and single-handedly make four-wheeled transportation ubiquitous in India. While
Tata projected monthly sales of 20,000-25,000 cars. Despite an annual production capacity of
250,000 Nanos, the company has only managed to sell about 129,000 to date.
While new product failures are a dime a dozen in the auto industry, the homegrown Nano
seemed like such a slam dunk, its failure is shocking. Experts say the Nano's biggest problem
should have been easy to see: Nobody, not even those in developing countries, wants a car whose
primary attribute is that it is cheap.
What started as a promise to be 'the people's car', Tata Motors' Nano got finding it tough to get
going with customers turning their backs to the model, sales for which had been dwindling and
clocked just 948 units in April 2017 and the exports also got declined to almost insignificant in
number terms. In an interview to PTI, former Tata group chairman Ratan Tata had admitted that
Nano, nicknamed 'the people's car', could not realize its full potential. The car got lot of media
coverage, publicity a public attention nationally and worldwide even before the launch of the
product. It has been a case study among the B Schools that how a car can be made at such a
pricing propositions. But its fate has been completely unpopular.

You are assigned the responsibility to understand and analyze the failure of the TATA Nano.
What would be:

 Problem definition process

 Research design
 Type of data: primary or secondary
 Geographical extent of study
 Unit of study
 Appropriate Sample size
 Appropriate sampling technique
 Nature of questionnaire/ scale
 Appropriate Data analysis technique

You are free to make suitable assumptions.

Note: The above case let is used only for the purpose of discussion in Marketing Research
among the first year students of MBA(E). Author acknowledges all the sources.