India turns battleground for Mercedes and BMW
PUNE: India is turning out to be a battleground for German luxury carmakers -Mercedes and BMW. Unfazed by BMW beating it in the first two months
of 2009, Mercedes Benz said that its arch rival achieved higher numbers by “pushing into the market with heavy discounts”.
“With the launch of the new 3-Series, they pushed the older version of the model with heavy discounts. So in that sense, we are not worried about their performance,” Wilfried Aulbur, CEO & MD of Mercedes-Benz India, told TOI here.
Aulbur said Mercedes
was against “stuffing” dealers with huge inventory to increase numbers. “In our model of business, everybody needs to win, including the dealers… Therefore, you have to find a medium between what a dealer can do and what a manufacturer can do. Otherwise , you run into a situation where you burn your partners (dealers) more than you should.”