Marketing Strategy of Toyota Motor Corpo PDF

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Executive Summary The 2013 Toyota Corolla requires the implementation of a marketing plan which incorporates five main focuses: repairing damages of excessive recalls in past units; reinventing the image of the Corolla; redefining new audiences; building relationships; and remaining measureable. Developing these objectives into a well-oiled campaign relies on clear understanding of, and effective representation of the company’s goals to the right audience. Using the strategies of company marketing plan, which has been defined by credible marketing research, we seek to increase American sales by seven to ten in the 18-34 year-old range by the conclusion of the fourth quarter in 2013. Driving towards increasing the sales of this market seven to ten percent, company campaign is formulated on a positioning strategy that considers competitors, offers opportunities that build brand awareness in company target market through optimized tactics, and remains measureable. Like everything else within company marketing plan, company positioning strategy maintains congruency with company intended market to increase the maximum reach—that is, ascertaining the consistent marketing message tactic is actually hitting and sticking to the intended market by conducting effective research and monitoring of metrics throughout the campaign. To increase company reach, we focus on brand building opportunities in frequency—or the number of times we can put the message and the Corolla in the way of the consumer on a regular basis through integrated media channels such as commercials, billboards, magazine, and much more. The details of the marketing plan—or the companies of promotional action that will deliver a consistent message across a variety of channels for the Corolla—are built upon company objectives and strategies which have been identified not only through marketing research, but conducting a situational analysis. The situational analysis provides insight to the environments affecting the Corolla and constraints which should be addressed by company marketing. Using tools, such as the SWOT analysis, to define strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats surrounding the 2013 Corolla; company plan allows us to adjust objectives and/or actions to enhance company marketing tact. Similar marketplace analyses have provided insight on the current issues surrounding the Corolla—boredom. Though company plan describes some modifications to modernize the Corolla without redesigning the entire model, one thing that resonates with familiarity among consumers of the Corolla is perfection. The Corolla’s current consumer trusts the seniority of the product to deliver on particular features they fell in love with in older models. However, Corolla is looking for a new audience, and the reliability in the Corolla is such that we can anticipate another audience who is looking for just that—parents and teens. For parents, it means safety for their teens; and for their teens, it means freedom, trust, and responsibility. For Toyota, it means generating a new loyal consumer base. Not only do we create a new audience through company plan, but we focus more on that consumer through the four c’s—or breed of marketing that emphasizes the gains for the consumer over the company by positioning the product based on the consumer, communication, cost, and convenience. Using the four c’s approach versus a traditional four p’s approach—which unlike the c’s approach, focuses on product, placement, price, and promotion as it relates to the company—we have devised a

Marketing Strategy of Toyota

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plan that focuses on a series of consumer relationship management tactics to take the new consumer from first-time car buyer to lifetime Corolla buyer by giving them more bang for their buck. Like many consumers, we believe the Toyota Corolla offers peace of mind in a vehicle that has been perfected. However, recent recalls greatly affect the image of Toyota and the perception of the company among consumers. Company plan contends, though, if parents grew up with us, then they can trust us to grow up with their children. We prove that by giving them and their children exactly what they ask for in a car they can trust at a price they can still afford. Company marketing plan not only reminds consumers of these ideas, but restores the Corolla to a degree of penetration that surpasses all others in the industry, while delivering a new image of Toyota to a new target family. The following details the approach that will accomplish company mission.

1.2 Company Profile Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) is a multinational company that produces cars, trucks, buses and robots, with headquarters in Toyota City, Japan. Toyota is the largest car manufacturer in Asia and second largest producer. Toyota is one of the three major Asian car manufacturers competing U.S. producers on the world market, the other two are Nissan Motors and Honda Motor. Also the company provides financial services through its subsidiary, Toyota Financial Services, and works in other fields. Automotive products are sold under the names Toyota, Scion and Lexus. Toyota owns a majority stake in Daihatsu and Hino, and 8.7% of Fuji Heavy Industries, manufacturer of Subaru cars. In 2005, Toyota together with Daihatsu Motor Company produced 8.54 million vehicles, almost 500,000 less than General Motors in that year. In July 2006 Toyota exceeded sales of Ford cars, but the American manufacturer has regained a month later. Toyota has a significant market share in U.S., Europe and Africa and is the market leader in Australia. Toyota has factories all over the world, where produces and assembles vehicles for local markets. The company has manufacturing or assembly plants in Japan, USA, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Poland, South Africa, Turkey, United Kingdom, France, and Brazil, most recently those in Pakistan, India, Argentina, Czech Republic, Mexico, Malaysia, Thailand, China and Venezuela. The first Toyota vehicle built outside Japan was a Land Cruiser FJ-251 built in São Paulo, Brazil, in May of 1959. The success both on the Japanese market and international market dues to its desire to make products with a quality. The Japanese believe that nothing is so good that it cannot be improved, so they constantly struggle to increase the quality of everything they do. This attitude can be expressed by a single word „kaizen”. It means „continuous improvement” and is the key word which guides them towards perfection.

1.3 History of Toyota 1920s-1930s Toyota was started in 1933 as a division of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works devoted to the production of automobiles under the direction of the founder's son, Kiichiro Toyoda. Its first vehicles were the A1 passenger car and the G1 in 1935. The Toyota Motor Co. Was established as an independent company in 1937. In 2008, Toyota's sales surpassed General Motors, making Toyota number one in the

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world. In 1924 Sakichi Toyoda invented the Toyoda Model G Automatic Loom. The principle of Jidoka, which means the machine stops itself when a problem occurs, became later a part of the Toyota Production System. Looms were built on a small production line. In 1929, the patent for the automatic loom was sold to a British company, generating the starting capital for the automobile development. Vehicles were originally sold under the name "Toyoda", from the family name of the company's founder, Kiichirō Toyoda. In April 1936, Toyoda's first passenger car, the Model AA, was completed. The sales price was 3,350 yen, 400 yen cheaper than Ford or GM cars. In September 1936, the company ran a public competition to design a new logo. Of 27,000 entries, the winning entry was the three Japanese katakana letters for "Toyoda" in a circle. But Risaburō Toyoda, who had married into the family and was not born with that name, preferred "Toyota" because it took eight brush strokes (a lucky number) to write in Japanese, was visually simpler (leaving off the diacritic at the end) and with a voiceless consonant instead of a voiced one (voiced consonants are considered to have a "murky" or "muddy" sound compared to voiceless consonants, which are "clear"). Since "Toyoda" literally means "fertile rice paddies", changing the name also prevented the company from being associated with old-fashioned farming. The newly formed word was trademarked and the company was registered in August 1937 as the "Toyota Motor Company".

1940s-1950s From September 1947, Toyota's small-sized vehicles were sold under the name "Toyopet" .The first vehicle sold under this name was the Toyopet SA, but it also included vehicles such as the Toyopet SB light truck, Toyopet Stoutlight truck, Toyopet Crown, Toyopet Master, and the Toyopet Corona. The word "Toyopet (Japanese article)" was a nickname given to the Toyota SA due to its small size, as the result of a naming contest the Toyota Company organized in 1947. However, when Toyota eventually entered the American market in 1957 with the Crown, the name was not well received due to connotations of toys and pets. The name was soon dropped for the American market, but continued in other markets until the mid-1960s. 1960s-1970s By the early 1960s, the US had begun placing stiff import tariffs on certain vehicles. The chicken tax of 1964 placed a 25% tax on imported light trucks. In response to the tariff, Toyota, Nissan Motor Co. And Honda Motor Co. Began building plants in the US by the early 1980s.

1980s Toyota received its first Japanese Quality Control Award at the start of the 1980s and began participating in a wide variety of motorsports. Due to the 1973 oil crisis, consumers in the lucrative US market began turning to small cars with better fuel economy. American car manufacturers had considered small economy cars to be an "entry level" product, and their small vehicles employed a low level of quality to keep the price low. In 1982, the Toyota Motor Company and Toyota Motor Sales merged into one company, the Toyota Motor Corporation. Two years later, Toyota entered into a joint venture with General Motors called the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc, NUMMI, operating an

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automobile-manufacturing plant in Fremont, California. The factory was an old General Motors plant that had been closed for two years. Toyota then started to establish new brands at the end of the 1980s, with the launch of their luxury division Lexus in 1989. 1990s In the 1990s, Toyota began to branch out from producing mostly compact cars by adding many larger and more luxurious vehicles to its lineup, including a full-sized pickup, the T100 (and later the Tundra); several lines of suvs; a sport version of the Camry, known as the Camry Solara; and the Scion brand, a group of several affordable, yet sporty, automobiles targeted specifically to young adults. Toyota also began production of the world's best-selling hybrid car, the Prius, in 1997. With a major presence in Europe, due to the success of Toyota Team Europe, the corporation decided to set up Toyota Motor Europe Marketing and Engineering, TMME, to help market vehicles in the continent. Two years later, Toyota set up a base in the United Kingdom, TMUK, as the company's cars had become very popular among British drivers. Bases in Indiana, Virginia, and Tianjin were also set up. In 1999, the company decided to list itself on the New York and London Stock Exchanges.

2000s In 2001, Toyota's Toyo Trust and Banking merged with two other banks to form UFJ Bank, which was accused of corruption by Japan's government for making bad loans to alleged Yakuza crime syndicates with executives accused of blocking Financial Service Agency inspections. The UFJ was listed among Fortune Magazine's largest money-losing corporations in the world, with Toyota's chairman serving as a director. At the time, the UFJ was one of the largest shareholders of Toyota. As a result of Japan's banking crisis, UFJ merged with the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi to become the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. In 2002, Toyota managed to enter a Formula One works team and establish joint ventures with French motoring companies Citroën and Peugeot a year after Toyota started producing cars in France. Toyota ranked eighth on Forbes 2000 list of the world's leading companies for the year 2005 but slid to 55 for 2011. The company was number one in global automobile sales for the first quarter of 2008. In 2007, Toyota released an update of its full-size truck, the Tundra, produced in two American factories, one in Texas and one in Indiana. "Motor Trend" named the Tundra "Truck of the Year", and the 2007 Toyota Camry "Car of the Year" for 2007.

2010s From November 2009 through 2010, Toyota recalled more than 9 million cars and trucks worldwide in several recall campaigns, and briefly halted production and sales. Toyota initiated the recalls, the first two with the assistance of the U.S.National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), after reports that several vehicles experienced unintended acceleration. In 2011, Toyota, along with large parts of the Japanese automotive industry, suffered from a series of natural disasters. The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami led to a severe disruption of the supplier base and a drop in production and exports. Severe flooding during the 2011 monsoon season in Thailand affected Japanese automakers that had chosen Thailand as a production base. Toyota estimated to have lost production of 150,000 units to the tsunami and production of 240,000 units to the floods. In October 2012, Toyota announced a recall of 7.43 million vehicles worldwide to fix malfunctioning power window switches, the largest recall

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since that of Ford Motor Company in 1996. The move came after a series of recalls between 2009 and 2011 in which it pulled back around 10 million recalls amidst claims of faulty mechanics.

1.4 Analysis of Vision & Mission Statement 1.4.1 VISION A vision statement for a company or organization focuses on the potential inherent in the company's future, or what they intend to be. It contains references to how the company intends to make that future into a reality, the vision statement is simply a description of the “what, “meaning, what the company intends to become. Toyota’s Global Vision “Toyota will lead the way to future of mobility, enriching lives around the world with the safest and the most responsible ways of moving people. Through company commitment to quality, and respect to the planet, we aim to exceed expectations and be rewarded with a smile. We will meet company challenging goals by engaging the talents and passion of people, who believe there is always a better way.” The Statement gives voice to who they are as a global enterprise, the values they embody, and the good that they are striving to accomplish. Designed to inspire all Team Members to even greater things, the Statement emphasizes Toyota's commitment to quality, innovation and respect for the planet. At its heart is this signature statement: We aim to exceed expectations and be rewarded with a smile. One aspect of the vision is “respect to the planet” The process for developing an Environment Action Process begins with the parent company in Japan, Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC). Every five years, TMC develops a global five-year environmental action plan (EAP). The ingenuity and persistence of team members at their Cambridge, Ontario plant, have found a way to reduce annual water consumption of water by more than 13.2 million gallons (50,000 cubic meters). This has made their plant in Princeton, Indiana, honor as one of only two North American Recipients of the Water Champion award.

1.4.2 MISSION A mission statement is a statement of the purpose of a company, organization or person, its reason for existing. The mission statement should guide the actions of the organization, spell out its overall goal, provide a path, and guide decision-making. It provides "the framework or context within which the company's strategies are formulated. Toyota’s Mission “To provide safe & sound journey. Toyota is developing various new technologies from the Perspective of energy saving and diversifying energy sources. Environment has been first and most important issue in priorities of Toyota and working toward creating a prosperous society and clean world.”

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 the mission statement of Toyota Indus Motors Company Ltd defines the organization's purpose and primary objectives. Its prime function is “to provide a safe and sound journey.”  It provides a reason for being, which is one of the most important aspect of a mission statement. The mission statement is clear and concise and provides focus and a sense of direction.  Toyota’s focus as mentioned in the mission statement is to develop new technologies and to conserve energy. They also seek to be environment friendly. Toyota’s Overall Mission Toyota’s mission statement declares their goals include gaining customers through provisions of high-valued products and services, and the most satisfying experience of ownership in America. This mission is topped only by the company’s vision of being the most successful and respected car company in America (Toyota’s Mission). With these values in mind, the marketing plan of the Corolla reflects an evaluated approach of Toyota’s quantitative and qualitative goals, to ensure alignment with the current mission and success in achieving. As a world-wide company, Toyota sets its goals based on world-wide sales. The current objective involves world-wide sales of the Toyota Corolla to reach 10 million, and the American sales of the Corolla to equate to ten percent of that. For a car that historically sells just above 750,000 units in American, the marketing plan aims to reinvent the image of the Corolla and target a redefined audience in order to generate the additional sales needed, by demonstrating the value of the Corolla and improving the relationship of consumers with the Toyota family (Toyota Financials, 2012). Company intentions include adding features and raising the price, which may ultimately affect the pursuit of company goal. However, company calculations prove that the sale of an additional 250,000 Corollas to meet company goal at company suggested starting price of $18,999, is estimated to bring in more than $4.7 billion. In addition to satisfying profit and other quantitative goals, Toyota must brand the Corolla with an image that matches the goals of the company. Among the highest ranking dissatisfying qualities of the Corolla, consumers indicate the vehicle’s blandness and typicality as the culprit for declining sales. While price keeps the Corolla safely bundled as the bestselling car overall world-wide, this differentiating strategy is certainly not lending to achieving the company’s vision of obtaining any kind of respect. The plan company firm has put together understands this, and works towards reinventing images for the Corolla and the company that brings the vehicle to us. 1.5 Company Strategy Toyota's management philosophy has evolved from the company's origins and has been reflected in the terms "Lean Manufacturing" and Just in Time Production, which it was instrumental in developing. Toyota's managerial values and business methods are known collectively as the Toyota Way. In April 2001, Toyota adopted the "Toyota Way 2001", an expression of values and conduct guidelines that all

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Toyota employees should embrace. Under the two headings of Respect for People and Continuous Improvement, Toyota summarizes its values and conduct guidelines with the following five principles:

Challenge Kaizen (improvement) Genchi genbutsu (go and see) Respect Teamwork

    

According to external observers, the Toyota Way has four components: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Long-term thinking as a basis for management decisions A process for problem-solving Adding value to the organization by developing its people Recognizing that continuously solving root problems drives organizational learning

The Toyota Way incorporates the Toyota Production System.