For Lexus, The India Journey Is Just About Beginning

President Yoshimiro Sawa sees a lot of growth potential for this iconic and premium brand

- Murali Gopalan

Yoshihiro Sawa pauses for a brief while before replying to the question.

The President of Lexus is at a roundtable with over a dozen journalists of which two are from India and the balance largely from countries in the ASEAN region. The venue is the Tokyo Motor Show where the LF-30 electrified concept was unveiled earlier in the day.

The question posed by this writer is how luxury brands like Lexus can straddle the challenge of affordability in emerging markets. “Emerging markets…well, it takes time to grow the luxury space in the beginning,” responds Sawa.

High on quality

Clearly, the key is to offer the right value proposition in order to draw more customers. Yet, he reiterates, one needs to be “very careful”. The implication is to steer clear of any attempt at affordability since a Lexus owner will not be satisfied with something that compromises even marginally on quality.

This could work with a mass brand with a much larger customer base but not in the case of Lexus where volumes are not the criterion to gauge success. Hence, any attempt at changing the core Lexus DNA could lead to complaints from customers.

According to Sawa, they are more likely to say: ‘We do not want this to happen!’ As he repeats, it is fine to offer higher additional value with a mass brand but not with something niche like Lexus where “this kind of mistrust can be risky”.