Thailand: Shell to Focus on Premium Products

The company hopes to lift its market share by one percentage point from 15 percent last year through new products and a more aggressive marketing strategy.

It has allotted a total marketing budget of 200 million baht for this year, 50 percent for promoting new benzine products. The other half of the budget will go to improving operations and marketing new lubricant products.

In order to achieve its target, Shell Thailand officially launched the new premium-grade petrol V-Power Gasoline, a new benzine octane 95 co-developed with Ferrari Formula One to tap into demand from upper-income motorists, as well as from owners of ageing vehicles that cannot use ethanol-based petrol.

The company plans to distribute the new product through 400 of its current 600 petrol service stations nationwide. "Our new product is the result of our six decades of co-development with Ferrari in order to find the petrol that will be best for Formula One racing cars. This product will also be the choice of motorists whose vehicle engines are incompatible with ethanol-based petrol and of customers who looking for the finest quality petrol," said Ms Pissawan.

Kamol Kongsakulvatanasook, Indochina retail marketing manager, said the new product was expected to raise the company's refined-oil products sales volume above the 2 billion litres it sold in 2008. "We will test the market this year by pricing the new V-Power on a par with premium petrol. If the market responds well, we might raise the selling price to reflect its production costs, which are slightly higher than the selling price of premium petrol so far," said Mr Kamol.

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