Japanese carmaker Nissan Motor Co Ltd is set to announce the roll out of SHIFT in Thailand, a corporate strategy aimed at "creating change and improvement in all areas of business, both internal and external," the company says.

Steven Wilhite, senior vice president at Nissan Motor's headquarters in Tokyo, said the SHIFT programme had recently been launched in Nissan's business operations worldwide and Thailand was one of the major Southeast Asian countries set for change.

SHIFT is "a strategy to change Nissan Motors into a more modern organisation and covers administration, corporate image, product quality, design concept, thinking processes and the relationships among Nissan staff and agents and its customers".

In Thailand, SHIFT has started and manifested itself in many different ways, Wilhite said.

Externally, the company has revamped its sales network, showrooms and services to Nissan's global standard and to "create higher value for customers".

The company has also launched Nissan Leasing Thailand to meet the varying financing needs of customers.

Internally, the company is in the process of invoking a customer-oriented, cross-cultural mindset among employees to improve all aspects of their performance and bring about greater customer satisfaction, Wilhite said.

Nissan was acquired by Renault, the France-based auto giant, in March 1997 after running into critical financial difficulties with huge accumulated losses resulting from the economic recession in Japan. It also had organisation structural problems, and suffered from a failure to launch cars that met customers' requirements.

Nissan Motor announced consolidated net revenue of 518.1 billion yen (Bt172 billion), up 1.1 per cent for fiscal year 2005, ended March 31, 2006, a record for the sixth consecutive year.

"The key significance of SHIFT is that it can change a person, a life or simply change the way you move through it.

And our challenge is to effectively define and bring the concept to life in major world markets - across all languages and across all media. This concept must be the foundation of all future marketing communication and PR activities," Wilhite said.

He said that SHIFT was not just a tag line but a tangible manifestation of the "Nissan Way". It is "challenging, provocative, and an invitation to see and experience the world through a fresh perspective. It reflects the way the company works, its business practices, products, and performance".

He said the SHIFT concept "changes the way Nissan looks and does things and the way the company reacts to circumstances around it.

It is no longer about just doing, but doing for a purpose, and doing it effectively. It is change, but change for better, faster, higher performance. Its aim is to create value, and the company believes great products define a great carmaker".

The new concept is the driving factor behind Nissan's Value-Up strategy, set up to improve Nissan products and customer service, and to boost the company's ability to respond to customer needs, and improve administrative efficiency, Wilhite said. The aim of Value-Up is to build Nissan and Infiniti, its luxury brand model, into "the most clearly defined and powerful brand names in the automotive industry".

He said that Thailand was an important market for the changes both from a sales and supplier perspective and as a manufacturing base.

Wilhite said that 10 new models would be introduced in Thailand under Nissan's Value-Up programme and the company expected it to boost local sales from 40,602 units in fiscal year 2005 to 54,000 units this fiscal year and up to 130,000 units in fiscal 2008.

"We [Nissan] had previously worked in different ways in different markets, products, pricing strategy and communication approach," Wilhite said. He cited Thailand as an example where the company previously focused on model image rather than product quality.

"Under our Value-Up strategy, we focus on one brand, one goal in every market around the world," he said.

Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn

The Nation