After the first full year of operation under its revival plan in the Kingdom, Nissan achieved its position as the fastest-growing automotive brand for the second consecutive year. Nissan, with its Kingdom-wide dealer Alissa Auto, reached the third position in sales with 61,806 units, reaching 7.2% market share and representing 141.7% growth year-on-year compared to 2013. Furthermore, Nissan's brand purchase consideration has strengthened by 27% reaching the second position in the market. In the Middle East, Nissan sold a record breaking 219,129 units in the 2014 financial year – up 3.3% on 2013. In the GCC specifically, Nissan recorded an 18.1% sales increase with 185,135 units sold in 2014 versus 156,778 in 2013— increasing its market share to 10.3%. Samir Cherfan, Managing Director of Nissan Middle East and Nissan Saudi Arabia, said: “I would like to express my sincere appreciation to our local distributor, Alissa Auto, for a great year, where we were able to achieve our number three position in the sales charts. Under the Power 88 Mid Term plan, we announced that we intend to increase our sales in the kingdom to one hundred thousand units by 2016.” “To achieve this goal, we have two areas that we will be focusing on. The first is leveraging our strong renewal of the line-up pillars that we have already been doing over the past two years. The second area is focusing on customer satisfaction through high density of network coverage and service availability, and through excellence in sales and service quality at competitive price,” Cherfan added. Sheikh Najeeb Al Aissa, Chairman and Managing Director of Alissa Auto, said: “At Alissa Auto, we are continuously working to meet our customers' needs and provide them with excellent services through our state-of-the-art branches. In addition to offering a full range of Nissan vehicles, providing our customers with a wide selection and being heavily present at close proximity to our customers, our prompt and high-quality service has had a direct effect on increasing sales.” In after sales with a clear strategy to establish itself as a leader in customer service in the region, Nissan announced it will continue to position its regular maintenance costs below competition and will expand its line–up with genuine products such as engine oil, batteries and affordable parts for vehicles more than three years old. Delivering on its after-sales promise, Nissan achieved record results in sales and service customer satisfaction reaching the top group level in the Gulf, and number one in three of the GCC countries. After one year of operation, Nissan has already entered the top four group in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Nissan line-up has performed extremely well in the Kingdom across the spectrum but sales of the Nissan Patrol, dubbed the ‘Hero of all Terrains in Life', the Nissan Sunny, the Nissan Pathfinder and the Nissan Pick-up range have all been exceptional. Unsurprisingly, the ever-popular Nissan Patrol notched record numbers over the period with 6,913 units leaving the Kingdom's showroom floors, a 260% hike on financial year 2013. The Nissan Sunny also attributed to the record breaking results, by achieving 12,782 units in 2014 with 109% sales growth from last year. Nissan Pathfinder recorded 240% growth with 2,205 units, and the Nissan Pick-up range recorded a significant growth increase of 148% versus 2013 with 29,627 units. In addition, Nissan achieved the best ever customer satisfaction results through top-level quality customer service. “Nissan's strategy for success is based on the well-known Nissan global growth strategy ‘Power 88', which CEO Carlos Ghosn announced Nissan would achieve by 2016. Under the Power 88 Mid Term plan, we announced that we intend to increase our sales in the kingdom to one hundred thousand units by 2016, wherein our recent record-breaking sales stand as a testament to the success of Nissan's global growth strategy, ‘Power 88'” Cherfan added. Under the Power 88 Mid Term plan, Nissan Middle east is targeting to sell over 300K units by FY16 and reach 10% Market Share in the whole region and 14.5% Market Share in the GCC. The 2014 period was not only successful for Nissan in terms of sales, but also in terms of awards as the Japanese automaker received 15 highly-regarded international and regional accolades, positioning Nissan as the most awarded automotive brand in the MENA region for the third consecutive year. — SG
