Indian car market - semiotic analysis

The issue we needed to address was to assess the reasons for drop in the market share of Tata Motors. We supplemented consumers interviews with a semiotic analysis. The latter gave us a historical perspective of how the brand imagery for Tata Motors has changed over the years and what are the emerging codes of design & aesthetics in the auto industry. We discovered that while the brand was firmly perched in the rugged-masculine quadrant, at a socio-cultural level the code for what was considered aspirational-masculinity had changed from rugged to 'refined' (masculinity). Refinement was also a values consumers were clearly expecting from new models launched. All of these dynamics gave us a cue as to why the brand might have fallen out of favour with consumers. 

(The scenario outlined below is our interpretation of the industry in the year 2013)