Needless to say, the new Nissan Titan full-size pickup truck faces fierce competition, all of which hail from Detroit. Nissan invested a lot of money when it completely redesigned the Titan, but so far sales figures haven't been as strong as hoped. According to Automotive News, Nissan is about to roll out a new Titan sales strategy to reverse that slowdown, and it's pretty radical. Instead of pushing sales at Nissan dealerships across the US, the automaker will focus its Titan marketing and distribution efforts in just four truck-loving cities:
Dallas, Houston, Phoenix and Salt Lake City. According to Nissan North America's senior VP of sales and marketing, Christian Meunier, once the automaker is "satisfied that we're where we want to be in those markets we will then move to our second phase." That will consist of an additional six, still unknown markets. Assuming that all goes well, another 40 markets will be added in the third phase. These sales efforts will only go nationwide once Nissan is satisfied with the sales figures in these initial markets. Don't worry if you don't live in one of these four cities; you'll still be able to buy a Titan or Titan XD, but supplies will be a bit more limited, at least for now.
Nissan further adds that this unique Titan sales strategy is beneficial for three main reasons: For starters, Nissan can avoid stretching Titan inventories too thin; second it can avoid stretching its marketing dollars too thin, especially when competing against the Detroit automaker's massive advertising budgets. Third and lastly, Nissan understands that selling full-size trucks is very different from selling crossovers and sedans, and therefore additional training is required for dealership sales staff. Nissan is currently conducting day-long dealer training programs to ensure both sales and service staff properly understand the Titan.
Overall, this sounds like a smart strategy on Nissan's part, but as we were told by a Volkswagen executive at Detroit last January, competing against America's domestic truck brands is fierce. Success is not guaranteed, hence VW's own decision to stay out of the American full-size truck market.
