Essay Toyota's Decision to Build a Plant in France

Hitchcock Automotive Services owns Puente Hills Toyota (PHT), which is a privately held company. In addition to, Hitchcock Automotive Services owning Puente Hills Toyota, they also own two other Toyota dealerships, a Volkswagen, Ford, Hyundai, and BMW dealership, all located in California. Puente Hills Toyota was a large Toyota dealership with about $85 million in annual sales. PHT employs around 145 employees and was awarded several excellent performance awards, including the Toyota’s President Award for overall excellence for the past 13 years (Merchant & Van der Stede, 2012). The dealership’s organizational structure was similar to those of others within the industry, other than they combined the new and used vehicle sales department. This organizational structure worked with Hitchcock Automotive Service’s philosophy of keeping manufacturers and customers happy. (Merchant & Van der Stede, 2012)

Toyota Company was established in the year 1937. Its main activities are the production of vehicles and sales. With its headquarters based in Japan, Toyota has employed over three hundred thousand employees. Toyota Company belongs to the motor vehicle industry where competition is tight even though Toyota is leading on the number of vehicles being sold on a daily basis. Toyota operates in 51 countries worldwide.

In 1990s, Toyota started manufacturing its cars in Belgium and in 1993, the company opened its European headquarters in Belgium (Chowdhury, 2015). In 1994, the company established a joint venture with Mitsubishi in Turkey to access Eurasian market and consequently begun manufacturing its cars from 2002 (Chowdhury, 2015). The company expanded its market into France, Poland, Russia, Czech Republic, and finally opened global a manufacturing in UK (Chowdhury, 2015). Firms start the process of converting to multinational incremental by beginning with making exports to a targeted country where there is potential market, joint ventures, and ultimately begin production and open headquarter in order to become operational in that location (Chowdhury,

Today, Toyota is the world's third largest manufacturer of automobiles in terms of both unit sales and net sales. It is also the largest Japanese automotive manufacturer, producing more than 5.5 million vehicles per year, equivalent to one every six seconds. See Appendix 1 for a list of its guiding principles. Appendix 2 depicts excerpts from the company’s 2000 annual report showing their main goals for that year. The company has 12 manufacturing plants in Japan and approximately 54 manufacturing companies in 27 countries throughout the world. These plants produce vehicles and components under the Lexus and Toyota brand names and employ about one quarter of a million people worldwide. In total Toyota vehicles are marketed and sold in more than 160 countries and regions with the automotive business, including sales and finance of the vehicles, accounting for more than 90% of the company's total sales. Appendix 3 shows worldwide sales and appendix 4 shows the models produced in North American Toyota plants. North Americanization of Toyota Since the late 1980’s Toyota had made several moves that showed their commitment to what management called the North Americanization of the company. The idea was to increase car sales in the lucrative North American market by also introducing manufacturing plants that produced parts and assembled whole vehicles for

Toyota Motor Corporation (TOYOTA) is one of biggest automaker in the world. Main products are a passenger car, truck, bus, RV etc. The company headquartered in Toyota, Aichi, Japan which employed 300,734 people worldwide and was the third largest automobile manufacture in 2011 by production behind General Motors and Volkswagen Group. Toyota is the eighth largest company in the world by revenue (around 200 billion USD) in 2011. The company reported it had manufactured its 200million cars in 2012.

The Toyota Prius was in the market introduction stage then it matured into the market growth stage. In the Product life cycle there are four different phases. There is market introduction, market growth, market maturity, and sales decline. The Toyota Prius as explained by the book was a new experimental technology that Toyota wanted to test and introduce to the market to see how it would react. Toyota was at a point in their business where they wanted to innovate something new. Some of the ideas that Toyota was considering prior to the Prius were

Toyota was made accomplishment in worldwide procedures. It has an definite motivation to disperse the channels, generation, showcasing and production network viewpoints. Toyota's best generation framework and persistent enhancements are the vital bits of its worldwide system. Idea of Kaizen continues change has engaged the organization to consider the new methods and techniques regardless of in any zone of the organization. Toyota Production System makes a connection between the worldwide automaker to deal with the inventory network framework, stock administration, generation abilities and arranging techniques. This TPS has enabled the Toyota to overwhelm the worldwide vehicles industry. Really the Toyota is situated in Japan yet it has created itself all through the world. Doubtlessly the Toyota is most no doubt understood auto brand of the world. Toyota's business is based upon the mission: Stable long haul development, while taking a stab at concordance with individuals, society and nature" (Toyota Motor Corporation Home Page). Toyota is giving a huge number of occupations in America. Social, financial and social issues have permitted the Toyota to move past the brand value and molded a universal showcasing spot for Toyota and made the progress as a worldwide

Research and Development is a department responsible for finding new information or technology that can improve the effect of the products or make the production of the products more efficient. Technology companies offer their services by developing more efficient technology than their competitors.

“Toyota Industries Corporation was founded in 1926 by Sakichi Toyoda. It is the world’s largest vehicle manufacturer. It conducts its business worldwide. Toyota’s vehicles are sold in more than 170 countries and regions. It employs approximately 320,808 people worldwide. It leads the automobile industry in environmental technologies with the success of the hybrid technology in the Prius and Hybrid Camry” (Toyota, 2012);

According to the works of Chaney & Martin (2011) and Harris & Moran (2000), they agree that international management skills are in need for the increasing scope of international trades and investments. A large number of multinational companies have expanded their businesses through both developed and developing countries. Some of the business invest directly and others are partnership arrangements and strategic alliances with domestic operations. Their studies show that independent entrepreneurs and small businesses have started investing and competing in the world marketplace. Thus, to acquire corporations’ objectives, there is exceedingly a necessity for the development of strategic framework for cross-cultural management and communication in the current competitive global market. Chaney & Martin (2011) also noted that, cultural awareness and cultural differences are strongly important to the multinational corporations’ success. A good understanding of the culture where business is implemented can make international managers productive and effective.

We will start the external analysis with the PESTEL analysis of the automotive sector followed by the Porter’s five forces analysis and we will end by having a look at the key competitors and competitor pricing.

As we know, Toyota is a competing and leading in automobile organization industry, they have key success factor in the automobile industry. They are

Toyota Company is a pillar company in the auto mobile business, a flag of economic progress. The Toyota Company has been a core company, a unique phenomenon, which has dominated the twentieth century. However, the automobile industry, including Toyota Company has suffered a series of structural problems and has become

Ford Motor Company was incorporated in Delaware in 1919. They acquired the business of a Michigan company, also known as Ford Motor Company, which had been incorporated in 1903 to produce and sell automobiles designed and engineered by Henry Ford. They are one of the world’s largest producers of cars and trucks. They and their subsidiaries also engage in other businesses, including financing vehicles.

main strategy for the North American market is to aim for higher sales, while raising the proportion of locally produced automobiles. Toyota Motor Corp have reached a stage where investments made over the last several years to expand production capacity are beginning to show returns and improved profitability can be expected. Toyota’s goal is to bolster local production through additional investment, and contribute to the regional economy by expanding its operations. At present, our production capacity in North America is approximately 1.25 million units (including our joint venture with GM). However, Toyota Motor Corp plan to boost this to 1.45 million units during 2003.