The country’s largest carmaker, Maruti Suzuki, may increase its marketing budget by 5-10 per cent this fiscal.
“We do expect a 5-10 per cent increase in marketing and advertising spends this fiscal,” a company executive said.
The car major had spent around Rs 357 crore on brand promotion activities last fiscal. During the peirod, the sales plunged due to a variety of reasons, including prolonged labour unrest and high interest rates.
Falling sales were also attributed to the absence of a good portfolio of diesel models. From near 50 per cent market share in the recent past, the company’s share crashed to 38 per cent in the last fiscal.
“The higher provisioning would come on the back of some new launches,” the executive said, without revealing the number of new products that would be rolled out.
“A good amount of this allocation will be apportioned to digital publicity as this will be one key focus area,” the official said, adding that as much as 5-7 per cent of the total spend will go into digital advertising this year.