Published on February 2020 | Marketing Management, Marketing, Branding

A STUDY ON BRAND PREFERENCE TOWARDS HYUNDAI CARS IN SOUTHERN DISTRICTS OF TAMILNADU

Hyundai Motor Limited (HMIL) is a subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Company(HMC). The products are exported to 88 countries across Australia, Asia, Middle East, Latin America and Africa. It has 493 dealers and more than 1,309 service stations in India. Available Hyundai models in South India(Nov,2019) are Elite i20, Grand i10, Venue, Santro, Verna, Xcent, Elantra, Tucson and Kona EV. The sample size is 120. Research tenure period is 6 months. The research is conducted in southern districts of Tamilnadu(geographical area), India. Convenient sampling technique is used to gather the datas. Simple percentage analysis and weighted average ranking method are used for the data analysis. Income level of the customers play a key role in brand preference. Product image is also a key source to select the product and that image is based on customer's awareness and related information about the cars. Price of the products plays a dynamic role for the selection of cars by the middle class customers. Most of the professionals and business respondents prefer Grand i10 and Elite i20. The brands Elanta,Tucson and Kona EV are least ranked models.Both Urban and rural people favour with Elite, Grand and Venue.Most of them prefer Hyundai cars for the standered range of fuel consumption.And another most them purchase the cars to show their status symbol and for driving comfort.Design is the another factor which influence the customers to purchase the car. In September 2019, the Hyundai Elite i20 registered 10,141 units of sales. The Hyundai Grand i10 placed in second, followed by Hyundai Venue with 9,358 and 7,942 units of sales, respectively. There is a positive relation between brand awareness and brand preference .It means the brand which has high awareness is more preferred and vice versa, the brand which is more preferred by the customers has high brand awareness.