Hit by declining sales in western Europe, Nissan is separating its sales and marketing operations from alliance partner Renault.

The switch is a major policy reversal for Nissan, which has spent the last five years integrating sales and marketing with Renault’s in Europe.

“With a market share of less than 3 percent, we are a small player in Europe,” said Brian Carolin, Nissan Europe’s vice president of sales and marketing. “We need to develop an appropriate business model.”

Nissan’s solution is to create three new regional business units. They will be based in Germany, France and Spain.

The German unit will cover Austria and Switzerland; the French division will include the Netherlands; and the Spanish operations will be responsible for Portugal. Nissan says the average combined sales of each business unit will be about 80,000 cars a year.

The business units’ marketing staffs will decide on which cars they will sell in their territories, plus decide on trim levels and prices. The business units’ sales staffs will handle dealer relations, the allocation of dealer territories and bonuses.

Countries such as Spain and Portugal will be linked for logical reasons: they have similar geographies and cultures, Carolin said.

They also will be combined for an economic reason: car buyers in those markets have similar demands.

Sales cannibalization

Nissan’s sales and marketing in the UK and Italy were never integrated with Renault’s so those markets are unaffected by the changes. Private importers handle distribution for Nissan in Belgium and Luxembourg.

Nissan already has regional business units in Russia, Scandinavia and central Europe.

As Renault and Nissan develop synergies in manufacturing and purchasing, it makes sense to separate sales and marketing operations, analysts say.

“The risk of cannibalization between the two brands is getting bigger,” said David Weill, a Paris-based partner at consultants A.T. Kearney.

The carmakers’ ranges are increasingly similar. In January, Nissan launched the Note small minivan looks a lot like its platform mate, the Modus small minivan from Renault.

The bigger the standardization of the product, the bigger the need to differentiate what’s visible to the customer such as retailing, Weill said.

“Your sales and marketing strategy needs to be more aggressive when you have a small market share,” he said.

Nissan’s Carolin said the carmaker keeps its brand identity clearly separate from Renault’s.

Dealer shake up

Nissan also is making changes in its European dealer network.

In Germany, where its sales have declined sharply, Nissan’s new strategy is to hire independent megadealers such as Dutch-based Kroymans Corp., which is opening dealerships for Nissan in Munich.

Nissan has cancelled its agreements with its 340 authorized dealers, 190 subdealers and 80 service centers in Germany as of January 31, 2007.

Nissan’s German dealers and subdealers sold about 52,787 cars in 2005, according to UK market researchers JATO, compared with annual sales of about 140,000 cars in the early 1990s.

“Germany is exceptional in the decline of its performance,” Carolin said.

“Kroymans is typical kind of guy we want,” Carolin said.

Nissan will not shake up dealer networks in other European markets. But it is aiming to have large dealerships in major cities, such as Milan, Turin or Madrid.

In Germany, Nissan has identified 135 territories, or “customer shopping areas” in which it plans to have one dealer. Large cities such as Berlin may have several. “We are recruiting from both inside and outside the network,” Carolin said.

This strategy is typical of carmakers with a small market share. They aim first for big cities to have maximum impact, analysts say, so they must recruit big, wealthy distributors who can handle the cost of setting up shop in large cities where real estate is expensive.

Some carmakers overcome the difficulties of opening dealers in big cities by setting up their own dealerships. Carolin said Nissan would not take that route. “It is a very expensive strategy,” he said. “The Nissan view is that OEMs should stick to what they know best – making cars. We prefer to attract the best retailers.”