In an interaction with Storyboard18’s Delshad Irani, Santosh Iyer, the managing director and CEO of the Indian arm of German luxury car maker Mercedes-Benz, shared his insights on macro and micro consumer trends, the brand’s customer experience centre, and electric vehicles.
Addressing the change in media consumption and preferences, especially with technological advances like ChatGPT, Iyer said, “We changed our consumer retailing model. We are the only brand to do direct-to-consumer sales. It helps us to get consumer data in a better way. The consumption of media is no longer a fixed-format consumption. The attention span being very less, the consumption of media is more on-the-go. A lot of content and media lines have blurred; many times we don’t know if we are consuming advertised content or if it is naturally generated content.”
He explained how Mercedes-Benz is leveraging the current trends, “In the luxury car segment, people run multibillion-dollar businesses, they run marketing departments by themselves and understand the space and, therefore, doing anything which is superficial doesn’t cut it. The entire focus of Mercedes-Benz is more on customer experiences. Today consumers want Instagrammable stories, and want unique experiences like going for a dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant because they own a Mercedes-Benz,” he said.
Iyer pointed out that the brand encourages the customer to advertise the experience centre to make it more credible and to propel the brand’s aim to build communities and experiences.
He also touched upon the luxury electric vehicle or EV buyer. “In the luxury space, first-time buyers want to own an electric car because it comes with a green number plate and that gives a different message. Today, if you have the Mercedes Benz, you are seen differently, but with an EQS (the marque’s line of electric cars), it’s a different statement that you make—not only are you spending on luxury but you are doing it responsibly.”
However, like any other EV customer, those considering an electric Mercedes too have concern about range and the public charging station experience.
“We are trying to take away that anxiety by considering creating our own highest fast-charging network in the country,” Iyer said. “We are also opening it up to other brands to drive electrification. The entire charging network including the app is available for all customers.”
He said that the company’s focus is clear when it comes to its customers. “We have a car at Rs 1.6 crore and we have an SUV at Rs 80 lakh. We don’t have entry-level cars on the EV side because we want to focus on top end customers, and their access to charging. Electrification will flow with high-end cars and slowly we will branch. The vision is that in the next four years 25 percent of our volume should come from electric.”