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Have the two-wheeler companies got the direction right?
India’s Top 5 two-wheeler brands have traditionally been metro focused. Question is, is the media relations programme of these brands a reflection of their market share?
Last week, we had discussed the concept of Quality of Exposure QE (%) in detail. For those who have missed the previous article, Quality of Exposure measures the quality of coverage that a company receives in the media.
Cirrus, the Corporate Image Monitor from agencyfaqs!, tracks the image of companies in the print media. And the Image Score of a company is the difference between positive and negative coverage.
This week, we will examine the Image of the two-wheeler industry for a limited sample of five companies, for the period January 2003 to April 2003.
The following chart compares the Top 5 companies (by Total Image points) in the two-wheeler industry over the four-month period.
| Company | Jan | Feb | Mar | April | Total |
| HERO HONDA MOTORS | 3015 | 882.49 | 727.63 | 3351.11 | 7976.23 |
| BAJAJ AUTO | 1738.7 | 864 | 3443.74 | 1155.62 | 7202.06 |
| TVS MOTOR | 1433.12 | 3014.18 | 245.68 | 1447.21 | 6140.19 |
| KINETIC ENGG | 802.37 | 2498.52 | 855.47 | 454.72 | 4611.08 |
| HONDA MOTORCYCLE | 251.65 | 212.27 | 748.33 | 1092.69 | 2304.94 |
On the whole, Hero Honda is at No 1 followed by Bajaj Auto at No.2. But if we look at the month-wise breakup, in January and April of 2003 Hero Honda was in the lead, while February saw TVS Motors at the top and March was Bajaj Autos' turn to lead in Image points.
While this is true at a national level, the scenario is different when seen from a city-specific perspective. How do the Top 5 companies fare in Image points across the metro cities? The following table shows the percentage share of Image in metro cities for the Top 5 companies for the period January 2003-April 2003.
% Share of Image in Metro Cities
| Company | Delhi | Mumbai | Calcutta | Madras | Bangalore | Hyderabad | Ahmedabad |
| BAJAJ AUTO | 23.2 | 30.3 | 26.9 | 20.1 | 22.6 | 23.3 | 29.9 |
| HERO HONDA MOTORS | 24.7 | 23.6 | 20.9 | 25.4 | 17.4 | 21.5 | 24.9 |
| TVS MOTOR | 14.1 | 15.1 | 14.9 | 26.2 | 26 | 23.8 | 18.1 |
| KINETIC ENGG | 11.2 | 9.3 | 11.3 | 9 | 11.6 | 9.6 | 9.7 |
| HONDA MOTORCYCLE | 6.9 | 5.7 | 8.7 | 8.6 | 5.7 | 7.9 | 7.1 |
Clearly, Bajaj Auto seems to have its media relation programme on an even keel while Hero Honda follows suit except for Bangalore. TVS Motors, the south-based champion, dominates in the southern cities of Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai.
So when will TVS' score move up north?
Kinetic Engineering and Honda Motorcycles have just been pillion riders as far as the metros are concerned, in spite of being among the Top 5.
Is it time for two-wheeler companies to re-examine their metro focus? Or is the media relations programme of these brands a reflection of their market share? © 2003 agencyfaqs!