1-4 Sales & Marketing YUSUKE SEKIGUCHI Vice President “In 2003, I was the “pilot”—essentially the project leader—of a cross-functional team that redefined the traditional sales function as a marketing function. Now I cover car sales as well as traditional marketing activities such as advertising and sales promotion. This is part of our effort to address one of the most competitive auto markets in the world—Japan. Our dealers conduct sales activities in the marketplace, and our role is to ensure that what they do reflects Nissan’s plans. We also gather customer feedback from the showroom to see how we can improve processes. Direct communication through online outlets is another new way of reaching out to customers. Although the total market in Japan was down in 2004, we managed to pick up market share. The two halves of the year were completely different, however. The first half was the ‘dry season’—where we didn’t have any new model introduction for over 12 months. We underestimated the impact that would have on our business, and the dealers had a tough time because of it. Then we organized the SHIFT_ event in the second half of the year, and for the first time ever introduced six new models simultaneously. This completely changed the playing field. While it was  a challenge for the dealers to launch six models in five months, it had a significant and positive impact. Japan’s population peaks in 2006, and automobile demand is expected to decline thereafter. With this in mind, Another positive change in our division is a more  cross-functional way of doing business. We communicate frequently with upstream functions such as Design, Product Planning and Communication through V-up and cross-functional activities. This is an essential exchange, because when Nissan creates a new product or service,  we are responsible for communicating the unique value we provide to the customer through ‘SHIFT_ points.’ We are demand creators, and that is how we create value for  the company.” The introduction of the Tiida provided an interesting test case in interactive communications for us. Not long before we launched the car, blogging became very popular in Japan, as it has been elsewhere. There are many car- related blogs where people share information about their favorite cars. As an experiment, we started a blog about the Tiida and encouraged people to comment on the car. This was the first proactive usage of automotive blog in Japan and brought a tremendous response—it actually became the market leader in terms of unique visits. The blog proved to be an amazingly effective way to generate word-of-mouth and communication between Nissan and its customers, and we will continue to utilize this channel in various ways. Our next task is to improve the quality of the sales and service process. We have already upgraded the management of our brand identity through various methods. For example, individual dealers used to handle newspaper insert production. We moved all insert production to headquarters, which not only reduced costs but also created a more powerful, uniform communication to customers. Today, 15 percent of our showroom traffic is generated from these inserts, an increase from 6 percent prior to centralization.  we’ve been focusing intensively for the past three years on building customer relationships. We realize we must increase and enrich our contact points with customers to raise our market presence. To this end, we decided to retail the full lineup through both our Red and Blue dealer channels, which formerly offered different products.  Nissan Annual Report 2004 41 OUR WORK