History Of Toyota Company Marketing Essay

Published Date: 23 Mar 2015

Toyota Company is the largest automobile company. Kiichiro Toyoda found the company in 1937. Toyota owns and operates Lexus and Scion brands and has a majority shareholding stake in Daihatsu and Hino Motors, and minority shareholdings in Fuji Heavy Industries, Isuzu Motors, Yamaha Motors, and Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation. The companies include 522 subsidiaries. The earlier name of Toyota is actually Toyoda because the founder name is Toyota. However, in September 1936, the company ran a public competition to design a new name of their company and from that competition; they newly formed word-registered Toyota. Then, the three ovals from their logo have their own meanings. The two perpendicular ovals represent a relationship of mutual trust between customer and the company. Then, the bigger oval implies a global expansion of Toyota's technology and unlimited potential for future. In 1934, the division produced its Type A engine, which was used in the first model A1 passenger car in May 1935 and the G1 truck in August 1935. Recently, Toyota has been reported to losing of money due to recall of vehicles. They announced two safety recalls that cover some of their car models. There were more than 10 models of their cars have been recalls.

Any organization cannot run without setting their objectives because it is shows the core of their success or failure. It is very important to set an objective in the organization in order to keep focused so as not to waste time, money, and other resources. The clear objectives, the easier that organization can achieve their target. Other than that, with the clear objectives, the organization can show what they should do in order to achieve their overall objectives and can easily focus on their all activities. Setting the objectives correctly provides the necessary support and help in the organization achievement.

THE RATIONALE FOR TOYOTA OF HAVING OBJECTIVE

Good objectives will provide a clear understanding of what is to be achieved by the organization. Therefore, since Toyota have faces lot of losses; they should come up with new clear objective in order to achieve their success as before. If they not arise with new objective, time by time, they will have a lot of problem in the future.

Besides that, it also important because using objectives, the performance of the organization or a specific project can be considered as for example, Toyota have given a discount for every purchase of their car. With that way, absolutely Toyota can attract back their customer from time to time.

Then, setting objectives before we taking any action is the only right thing to do. For example, it will give the Toyota a target to aim for them. For that reason, all the action taken and efforts will be focused on achieving the objective instead of being inadequately used. Other than that, it also might motivates the top management and the employees of Toyota company which is providing some kind of rewards since their employees shows the high reputation of work such as they are able to complete the project successfully.

The other rationale why Toyota setting their objective is they are supporting one another in life and living. It means by Toyota hope towards the awareness of the people in which each individual can live with dignity and hope. By that, Toyota may support the efforts to activate the understanding that they found in everyday life and to build a good society through common support and collaboration among their employees.

Other than that, with the objective that provided by them, it might support the initiatives to improve the lives and minds of young people, with the aim of the next generation's encouragement. They hope that this will enable the next generation to respect each other's cultures to create a path to the achievement of lasting peace.

Next, with a proper objective, Toyota can plan their business in the future. It is means by how many profits they want to achieve in a year, how many cars they want to sell in a month, etc. it is very good plan that may help them be more successful in the future. Since they have so many problems now a day, it is important for them to reproduce their objective to become more efficient in order to gain back their profit as usual.

CONCLUSION

As a conclusion, that I can say is setting the objective is very important to each company not only for the Toyota Company. This is because with clear and proper objectives, the company can easily achieve their target and might be a successful company in a short time. In the early existing of the Toyota Company, it has given them a very good reputation in over the world. We never heard about the bad thing of the company. Unfortunately, the success of the Toyota Company did not last long because their company has done something that has affected them to assure many losses. This is because they did not aware about the problem and keep continue do the same thing until many of their car has to recall. Therefore, this is the big impact that they have to faced and think how to solve the problem.

Refer to www.asset.panda.org, stakeholder is an individual, group, or institution that has a vested interest in the natural resources of the project area and/or who potentially will be affected by project activities and has something to gain or lose if conditions change same. According to Coulter, M. (2001), shareholder analysis defined as an important technique for stakeholder identification and evaluating their needs. It is used to identify the primary and secondary stakeholders who have a vested interest in the issues with which the project is concerned. The objective of stakeholder analysis is to extend a strategic view of the human and institutional landscape, and the interactions between the different stakeholders and the issues they care about most.

FIGURE 1: STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS

SOURCES: http://assets.panda.org

THE IMPORTANCE OF STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS TO TOYOTA COMPANY

The managers of Toyota Company can apply a stakeholder analysis to discover the key actors and to contact their interest, knowledge, alliances, positions, and importance related to their policy. This allows the Toyota's manager to cooperate more successfully with the key stakeholders and to enhance support for a particular policies. When the Toyota's company is conduct this analysis before a policy is implemented, the managers can detect and act to prevent potential misunderstanding about and/or opposition towards the policy. When a stakeholder's analysis and other key tools are used to guide the implementation, the policy is more likely to succeed.

Stakeholder analysis gives useful and correct information about those persons and organizations that have an interest in health development. This information can be use to provide input for other analyses to develop action plans to increase support for a restructuring policy. To increase support, the Toyota's managers must take extra steps following the stakeholder analysis. Otherwise, the Toyota's managers should use the information that created by the stakeholder analysis to increase and apply strategic communication, support, and cooperation plans.

Therefore, the following car that stated above, they should recall their car to the nearest Toyota Company. If they are still using it, it may cause a trouble soon because the entire car has a problem at the pedal and floor mat. As a result, as a consultant, I would suggest to Toyota to used intensive strategy in order to change the stakeholder's attitude towards Toyota Company.

INTENSIVE STRATEGIES

Intensive strategies are requiring incentive efforts to improve a firm competitive position with existing products (David, 2007). An intensive strategy has three types such as market penetration, market development, and product development.

Market Penetration

Refer to David (2007), market penetration is one of the four growth strategies of the Product-Market Growth Matrix. Market penetration occurs when a company enters or penetrates a market with current products. The best way to achieve this is by gaining competitors' customers. Other ways include attracting non-users of company product or convincing current clients to use more of company product or service. This Product-Market Growth Matrix can help Toyota recognize if there was any advantage of entering a market.

Marketing strategy used by Toyota Company to increase the sales of a product within an existing market through the more aggressive marketing tactics. For example, Toyota publishes a new car model that is using of less fuel. This is because consumer in all state or country able to purchase this car because of the global price of fuel was always increasing. Toyota Company can manage their transition to becoming a leading regional player well, without losing focus in leading the market in over the world.

Market Development

According to David (2007), market development means introducing present products in new geographic areas. Toyota attempt to identify and develop new markets for their entire products. There are three general strategies applied in market development:

Working within the demographic market, Toyota can see if any particular demographic group can be encouraged to buy more of the product or if any new group within the demographics can be encouraged to purchase the product.

Looking at the institutional market, Toyota can see if these buyers can be increased.

Attempting to develop markets in new geographical areas. To affect these strategies, Toyota marketers will attempt new distribution methods, change the design of promotional efforts, and attempt to discover and promote innovative uses for an existing product.

A market development strategy targets non-buying customers in currently targeted segments. It also targets new customers in new segments. Toyota marketing manager uses these four groups to give more focus to the market segment decision include existing customers, competitor customers, non-buying in current segments, new segments.

For example, Toyota market development gives a discount to every purchase of new car in US. Toyota has consistently been offering innovative promotions to its customers. It recently extended these promotions for several months with offering customers different discount for different kind of car models.. To affect these strategies, marketers will attempt new distribution methods, change the design of promotional efforts, and attempt to discover and promote innovative uses for an existing product.

Product Development

According to Coulter (2001), new product development (NPD) is the term used to describe the complete process of bringing a new product or service to market. There are two similar paths involved in the NPD process:

One involves the idea generation, product design, and detail engineering.

The other involves market research and marketing analysis.

Companies typically see new product development as the first stage in generating and commercializing new products within the overall strategic process of product life cycle management used to maintain or grow their market share.

Examples, Toyota are using the Electronic Throttle Control System (ETCS). The purpose on that are uses to improve fuel economy, reduce emissions, and help enable important safety features such as stability control and traction control. Other than that, Toyota also succeeds to solve the problem of their several recall cars and the dealer can get it soon. Therefore, successful product development is essential for any business if it hopes to exist for any length of time.

CONCLUSION

As a conclusion that can be made at here is if every company has a problem that can affect their profit, they should find the solution for that problem immediately. Therefore, for Toyota Company, they are able to using intensive strategies because this strategy can be a great way for Toyota to get in on opportunities and increase profits. For instance, Toyota can extend their marketing reach; access needed information, with a particular target market. Furthermore, intensive strategy for Toyota Company can invest chance to penetrate a new market in much country.

ORGANISATIONAL AUDIT & ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT

INTRODUCTION

According to Coulter (2001), environmental audit is defined as an effort to understand the forces outside organizational limitations that are helping to form the organization. The environmental audit is also known as external forces. The external forces can provide both assisting and reducing the influences on organizational performance. Therefore, Toyota company have to apply these external forces towards theirs organization in order to reduce the influence and able to perform well in the organization. While organizational audit is an effort to understand the forces inside the company that are helping to make the organization operate more efficiency. Organizational audit is also known as internal forces.

The key dimensions of the environment that bear on the institution include the legal, technological, political, economic, demographic, environmental, competitive, governmental, social, and cultural contexts. Other than that, all the keys factors can allow the Toyota Company to feel change and reconstruct its organization to improve their production and services. Then, the fourteen keys of internal forces are management, marketing, ,manufacturing, research and development, purchasing, distribution, production or operations, packaging, human resources management, vendor relations, computer information system, employee or manager relations, promotion and finance.

ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT

COMPETITIVE

Customer and market change are a heavy impact on external forces that change and organization. Customers are the buyers of every product and as time changes customers' demand more from service and products. Therefore, to ensure their loyal customer to use the same car brand in the future, Toyota Company have to audit this factor which they can diversify their designs of the car. This is because the customer loves to buy something different and will expect more than from Toyota Company to manufacture their car that following their needs and wants. If change in service and product are not met then customers will shop in different locations and different store because of low changing company. So that, Toyota should focus on this factors in order to attract more customer soon.

TECHNOLOGICAL

Technological advancement is another characteristic of external forces that effect an organizations change. Using an advance technology will cause the workers will work hardly in the future because the advancement of the machine can help them lot in order to manufacture the vehicles. Therefore, Toyota Company should find the most advance technology and adopt it inside their manufacturing plant. Other than that, technological advancements help to shape the Toyota Company to perform well in term of producing their new product. Besides that, the technology changes will occur every day, every hour, and every second. Thus, it is always a way for Toyota Company to improve a product and extensive research to proves that. Toyota company must audit this factors in order to manufacture the better product from time to time.

DEMOGRAPHIC

Demographics in the work place are well known for each employee to work at his or her full amount of potential the work place needs effective diversity. Therefore, Toyota Company also should audit this factor because this factor is important component in order to creating the customer profile by analyzing the customer behavior, attitudes, and lifestyle. While demographics are joined directly to identifying target markets, the observing how the demographics change is important for making marketing decision. Otherwise, diversity is crucial and the fact is in the next 20 years, 80 million young adults will enter the workforce and technology will be a very strong factor to their success.

Management is a very important part of an organization including Toyota Company. Management is comprised of the people who lead, guide, and shape the company. The management of Toyota Company plays an important role in order to achieve their goals. The management is takes an important part in planning, organizing, leading, and controlling all the ways in the production of Toyota company. All these are doing by the management because it will give direction, and achieve the goals of Toyota Company with available resources. Therefore, Toyota should audit this factor because it enables them to specify the resources that use in their application and let them treat the group of user by assigning the users.

The human resources management function includes a variety of activities and deciding what kind of staffing that the company needs, hiring, recruiting, and training the best employee, ensuring that they are high performers and management practices conform to various regulation. Based on my opinion HRM of Toyota company have to maintained an old rule and control mentality, where they see their job as making sure all the staff are doing the job that there are supposed to do because Toyota company require many employees inside their company. When the problem arise in Toyota company, the HRM play an important roles in order to manage back the activities of the company and ensure that all the employee do their job properly.

Toyota Company is a well-known company because it is a worldwide company. Even our state, Malaysia is having such kind of Toyota's cars. When people are mention about Toyota, straight come from their mind are a luxurious car and the price is quite high compare to our brand's car. That means the Toyota have the strong brand image. Other than that, the spare part of the car is easy to find. Therefore, if the user of Toyota's car wants to find some spare part for their car or their car has some problem, they just go to the Toyota outlet to get some advice or get the stuff that they are needed.

WEAKNESS

The major weakness of Toyota Company is they are always the premium charge to their customer. For the first time purchased their cars, they must give some discount to the customer in order to make them purchase their cars. If they still charge the higher price, the customer might hold their intention to purchase the car. After that, they also find that there are so many variety of culture inside the company. This is not good for them because it might affect the reputation of the company one day. The other weakness is Toyota company need to watchfully keep producing the cars. Make sure the cars that there are producing is a perfect and do not have any mistake in terms of engine, body, etc.

OPPORTUNITY

The opportunity that Toyota Company can catch is they can expend more aggressively into the new segments of market. From that, they can get more customer and more profit. Next is Toyota should come up with the new car model that using an efficient fuel. This is because with a efficient fuel it make a greater performance and less impact towards the environment. Otherwise, Toyota can develop a car that respond to the social and customer needs and wants. The advance of electric cars, mix fuels, and components also reduces the impact on the environment.

THREATS

The threats that Toyota Company are facing are a lot of competition from the competitor. They were battle to win the customer with so many promotions. Then, the other weakness, there are so many cases that Toyota company needs to recall their cars because of the damage from the car. So, the customer needs to return back the car to the Toyota company and get something in return from Toyota. Otherwise, since the prediction of a downturn in the economy, it might affect the car purchases especially for the new brands because the price is still higher in the market. On the other hand, the increasing of the fuel prices also might affect the sales of the Toyota cars. The customer may not using the car because the cost of fuel is too high and they are rather going somewhere by using the public transport.

SWOT MATRIX

STRENGTH + OPPORTUNITY

Refer to the table above; Toyota Company can produce the car that is more fuel efficient because of their spare part is high quality and easy to find anywhere. If the parts are high quality, they should think more deeply how to make a car that is more fuel-efficient. There must be the way to make such car likes that.

STRENGTH + THREAT

As we know, Toyota has a strong brand image. Everyone knows about Toyota car. Since the Toyota Company needs to recall their car model, it was discredit their company's name. Thus, Toyota should make sure that their becoming model of car does not have the same problem as the entire problem.

WEAKNESS + OPPORTUNITY

As we know, the Toyota Company needs to carefully keep producing their car to avoid from any misleading anymore. So that, with a proper technique, Toyota can create a new car that is respond to social and based on the customer needs and wants. Otherwise, the customer will expect more from the Toyota Company because they do not want the Toyota Company produce a problem car anymore since it will make Toyota Company might faces more losses.

WEAKNESS + THREAT

Since the economy global is, fluctuate and unstable, many people are careful to use their money. They will minimize the using of their household. Therefore, Toyota Company must give a lower price as the first payment. That we call as a trick to attract more customers. If Toyota implement this strategy, it may help them a bit to increase back their profit slowly and they will get more profit in the future.

STRATEGIC POSITION FOR TOYOTA

According to the SWOT matrix above, I can say that the strategic position for Toyota Company is ST strategies. It means Toyota Company has a good strength but in the same time, they have to fight with the threat that they have to faces. Toyota Company is a strong brand image and can classify as a market leadership because Toyota is a worldwide company. They have opened their company all over the world. That is why I can say Toyota Company is a market leadership. However, when the Toyota Company wants to achieve their successful, they have brought so many problems that affect their sales and profit for the following month. The major problem that they should face was they had to recall some of their car models because of floormat issue. Other than that, another threat of Toyota is increased competition and global fuel prices. So many competitors compete with Toyota Company such as Honda, Nissan, Hyundai, etc. these company also have their own strategies to attract their customer. Therefore, Toyota must make their strategies more interesting and valuable from the others. Next is the increase price of the fuel. Nowadays, the price of the fuel was not stable. Sometimes it will go higher and vice versa. Therefore, when the price of fuel is at the higher level, for sure the person who have lower salary will not use their car to go to the nearest place or work. Subsequently from that, we can rationalize the sales of the car will reduce by time to time because of fuel factors.

CONCLUSION

To conclude, Toyota can get more benefits if they doing SWOT analysis or SWOT Matrix in their company. The first benefits flexibility or customizable, the basic SWOT technique can be formed to meet customer needs. The last benefits is collaborative, it allows the participation of the team. In addition, since the whole teams are worked together, the results are more likely to more correctly represent the real environments.

STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS

INTRODUCTION

According to www.netmba.com, the strategic planning process can be view as a somewhat circular flow of topics and action steps, where the results from one-step initiate study and action in the next step.  Nevertheless, the process does not essentially always run in one direction.   Issues that come up in a particular step may cause the planning group to go back to an earlier step to do additional work.  The performance step also does not end the planning process.  In addition, it is recommend that the plan be evaluated on an yearly basis to verify that all the base assumptions are still applicable and that the performance plan is progressing according to prospects.

STRATEGIC PLANNING MODEL

Establish long-term objectives

Generate, evaluate, and select strategies

Implement strategies: Mgt Issues

Implement strategies: Marketing, finance, accounting, R&D, CIS

Measure and evaluate performance

Perform external audit

Perform internal audit

Develop mission statement

STRATEGY EVALUATION

STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION

STRATEGY FORMULATION

STRATEGY FORMULATION

DEVELOP MISSION STATEMENT

In the strategy formulation process, the mission statement sets the mood of where the company should go. The mission statement describes the company's business vision and the purpose of the company and looking forward visionary goals that guide the pursuit of future opportunities. The mission is its reason being. The mission is expressed in the form of a mission statement, which conveys a sense of purpose to employees and the company image.

The mission statement of Toyota Company is they seek to create a more successful people through automotive manufacturing. That is why they are manufacturing the different design for their new car's model. This difference has made them successful with the automotive manufacturing business. The consumer love to purchase their models because of the uniqueness.

INTERNAL & EXTERNAL AUDIT

The internal analysis can identify the strengths and weaknesses of the Toyota Company and the external analysis reveals opportunities and threats for them. The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is a words for SWOT analysis.

The strength of Toyota Company is their brand. Their brand is famous all over the world. Everyone knows what Toyota Company is. It was one of the successful automotive companies in the world. Otherwise, the other strengths are it is suitable for rural area, dealership network, easy to find the spare part, market leadership, etc. Next, the weakness of Toyota company are they are always the premium price, diversity of culture in workers, needs to cautiously keep producing cars, etc. they are always change the premium price of the car. To maintain the profit, they should find the fix price for that.

Then, the opportunities that will grab for them are they are can expend more aggressively into new segment of market, develop a new car which fulfill the customer needs and wants, be a creative and innovative manufacturer and produce car which are more fuel efficient. This opportunity might improve the Toyota's ability to go further in the market. Afterward, the threat that give an impact toward their business are the increasing number of competitor, unstable economic, global fuel price and the major error come from their company itself. So, they should find a way to reduce the weakness that might give an effect for the company.

OBJECTIVE

Objectives are actual goals that the organization seeks to achieve, for example, an earnings growth objective. The objectives should be demanding but feasible. It also should be measurable so that the company can watch its progress and make corrections as needed. The next element is clearly state the business's objectives in terms of the results it needs and wants to achieve in the long term. The long-term objectives should relate to the opportunity and requirements of all the major stakeholders, including employees, and should reflect the original reasons for running the business. These objectives could cover growth, profitability, technology, offerings and markets.

Therefore, the objective of Toyota Company firstly is to create vehicles in which people can live with safety, peace of mind, and comfort. It is means, Toyota wants to create car that might give satisfaction towards their customer. Next, Toyota want to balancing the twin vision which are zeronize and maximize. Zeronize means they want to minimizing the negative aspects vehicles that have the environment impact, traffic congestion, or traffic accidents, while maximize is their effort in maximizing the positive aspects vehicles such as fun, delight, excitement and comfort that people wants in vehicle.

EVALUATE & SELECT STRATEGY

Since Toyota Company faced with many problems, as a consultant I already suggest them to implement the intensive strategy because this strategy might help them to reduce their burden and will help them to solve their entire problem. Other than that, these intensive strategies can give an effort to improve the Toyota company competitive position with existing products.

STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION

The selected strategy is implement by way of programs, budgets, and procedures. Therefore, the intensive strategy can make Toyota company make an improvement from time to time. Other than that, implementation also involves organization of the Toyota company management and motivation of the staff to achieve their objectives. The way in which the strategy is implemented can have a significant impact on whether it will be successful. Thus, Toyota Company should implement the intensive strategy in a proper way to make it worth. In a large company, those who implement the strategy likely will be different people from those who formulated it. For this reason, concern must be in use on behalf of the Toyota management to correspond the strategy and the way of thinking behind it. Otherwise, the implementation might not succeed if the strategy is misunderstood or if lower-level managers resist its implementation because they do not understand why the particular strategy was selected.

STRATEGY EVALUATION

Once Toyota Company has done their strategy implementation, the results of the intensive strategy need to be measured and evaluated, with lots of changes as necessary to keep the strategy or plan on path. The evaluation and control system should be developed and implemented to help this monitoring. The normal of performance are set, actual performance measured, and appropriate action taken to ensure success. As a result, Toyota company will critically reduce their problem with a correct perform measurements and with a necessary changes that they were implement.