Mahindra & Mahindra’s Xylo: The MPV’s Product Positioning Strategies

The success of SCORPIO resonates with the success of Mahindra & Mahindra as Indian leader in SUVs / MPVs. However, with the huge success of Toyota’s Innova, M&M had to come up with a ‘value for money’ MPV and Xylo was the result. With the launch of Xylo – a Multi-utility Vehicle (MUV) from Mahindra & Mahindra’s (M&M’s) Utility Vehicle segment – the company shuffled the positioning of its existing products Bolero and Scorpio in 2009.  The company says, Scorpio which has been fulfilling the requirements of SUV and MUV until now has been re-positioned as a high-end SUV. Similarly Bolero, which has been marked as an ‘undefined utility vehicle‘ has now entered the SUV segment as a low-end SUV model.  Although, Mahindra & Mahindra claims that its product positioning strategies are clear, the launch of Xylo created a dilemma in terms of price overlapping and product differentiation in the UV segment.  This case delves in to how companies carry out the activities of segmenting, targeting and positioning to meet their business objectives. Its teaching note is particularly helpful in understanding the need of product positioning and the need to create a brand image with successful positioning strategies.

The concept of product positioning in the 21st century is blurred as many of the companies appear to have no ground or base on which they are really operating. Companies are operating with short-time goals to make a quick buck and quit soon. Unlike previous century, where companies successfully positioned their products by slicing and targeting consumers into right segments, most of the companies today are positioning their products with no clear strategies. Thbis is because most of the companies are falling to set specific attributes for their products, services and their brand image. Most of the companies want to enter just because there is a scope for penetration and run the business without real long-time objectives

When we observe the positioning strategies of few brands like ‘Lifebuoy’ or ‘Colgate’, their positioning strategies was clear since their inception. While Lifebuoy build its brand as a mark of ‘health and hygiene’ product, Colgate positioned its dental products by offering a ‘cavity protection’. While branding communicated the benefits of their products during previous century, today the importance of branding seemed to have lost its meaning.  Similarly, positioning a product became a way of offering products with cosmetic changes to the existing product categories, rather than new products. In this context, I recall the saying of John Trout who said that ‘Positioning is not what you do to the product. It is what you do to the mind of the prospect.’

While I was searching about the concept of ‘Product positioning’ to explain to management students before orchestrating a class, I came across an interesting case study about ‘Mahindra & Mahindra’s Xylo: the MPVs Product Positioning Stategies’ on a website named www.ibscdc.org. The case study helped me in understand the concept of Mahindra & Mahindra’s product positioning strategies and the dilemma of its newly launched Xylo between two existing products Bolero and Scorpio in the utility vehicle segment. Its teaching note is particularly helpful in understanding the need of product positioning and the need to create a brand image with successful positioning strategies.