The Company Toyota

How Well does Toyota Capitalize on Its Strengths to Meet Threats and to Take Advantage of Opportunities? To What Extent Will Their Weaknesses Impede These Efforts? The reputation of the company is very strong, since the company is well-known throughout the globe. Toyota is considered to have set very strong brand equity among its loyal customers. The Toyota brand is ranked among the most admired automotive companies in the whole world. Another strength of the company is that it has a large number of loyal customers which shows that it has become a global brand in the world, as compared to its close competitors. Toyota has the ability to continuously come up with revolutionary innovations which help to boost the company’s sales and also widen the profit margins. This shows that Toyota has great and substantial innovation resources which are very hard to be imitated by the company’s close competitors, and they are very valuable to the company which has enabled the company to maintain the brand loyalty among its customers (Cullen, 2010).

The company has several marketing strategies, and advertisements are spread through a few distribution channels, like the internet, billboards, and also TV advertisements. Toyota’s motor vehicle heritage is of the very high quality and drivability, and it delivers reliable, high value and consistent quality of automotive cars. In the automotive industry, Toyota’s marketing abilities are positioned as one of the best in the industry, which makes it a great strength for the company, because it is able to strong out from its close competitors.

These strengths of Toyota Company can enable the company to be able to take advantage of all the opportunities which are at the disposal of the company, if they are properly maximized through the help of the executives of the company. This is because they have to come up with strategies which are aimed at the maximizing of these strengths, since they can also help in reversing the weaknesses and the threats of the company (McGriff, 2012).

Toyota Company like any other company faces a great number of problems which have proved to be the weaknesses of the company. The production capacity of the company has been a major weakness. Its production is based in Japan and the U.S., which shows that the company is exposed to the strong political conditions and the fluctuating economy. This has made the company to be seen as a foreign importer, because since the company produces its cars in Japan and the US, the competition in these countries is strategically located, and it could end up taking advantage of the efficient global gains (Gulf States Toyota, 2005).

The Toyota Company has been experiencing poor financial services which are usually made of the leasing and loan programs for all their dealers and their loyal customers. This is because the operating income of the company has been stagnant due to the poor profitability of the company’s financial services division which could end up affecting the general performance of the company. This is because in the year 2007, the company only recorded  a JPY 159 billion of the operating profit in its financial services operations which showed that there was a sharp decline of about 11% of the CAGR from the JPY 200 billion in the year 2005. This might have been as a result of the massive car recalls by the company (Industrial Engineer, 2010).

The weaknesses of Toyota should be properly addressed by the executives of the company to stop them from posing threats to the company. This is because if they succeed to pose threats to the company, then the competitive advantage of the company would be very low, since in the automotive industry, the competition is very stiff, since there are no barriers to entry.

Question ii. Based on You Analysis and Findings, What Would You Recommend to the Executives of Toyota Corporation? Why? Please, Explain Your Reasoning. In order for Toyota Company to be successful in the competitive market, there is a need to have good innovative leaders who are very good at the decision-making of the company. Some executives are solely to be blamed for the failure of the businesses and the companies that they manage, because they prioritize the profit goal ahead of the customer satisfaction goal. The customers play a very important role in the existence of the company, since, no matter how good the company’s products are, they need the customers to purchase the products.

The reason as to why I recommended the leadership management strategy for the Toyota Company is that the executives of Toyota Company are the leaders of the company, and they have to act as the role models in the company. Leaders are the ones who are responsible for all the decision-making processes in the company, and a good leadership management can lead to very good decisions into maximizing the strengths of the company in realizing the company’s goals. They have to come up with the company’s internal analysis, which is made up with the strengths and weaknesses of the company, and then come up with good decisions on how they can be able to strengthen the company for its own benefit in terms of the profit margins that the company gets in maximizing all these strengths (Cullen, 2010).

The executives of Toyota should not only focus on the strengths of the company alone, since they are very beneficial to the company, unlike the weaknesses which, if they are not taken into account, can be a very great threat to the company which may symbolize the downfall of the company. These weaknesses should be properly addressed and reversed to be strengths of the company. Competition in the automotive industry is very stiff, and the executives should come up with strategic plans which are aimed at reversing the weaknesses of the company, so that they can convert them into strengths of the company, since the company’s weaknesses can be used against the company by the close competitors of the company, which could lead to the downfall of the company and the reduction in the total sales and the profit margins.

What Do Perceive You Have Learnt in Module 3 Case Assignment? Please Provide Your Evaluation of the Module 3 Case Assignment in Brief? What I have learned is that the strengths and weaknesses are the part of the SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities) of a company which is a very important process in the decision-making of the company towards its set goals and objectives.  These strengths and weaknesses are the matters which concern issues like the programs in the company, key organization strategies and the core resources. The strengths of a company are the characteristics in a company which give it an added advantage over its close competitors like BMW, Isuzu and Honda. The weaknesses of a company are the characteristics which limit the company in the competitive industry.

The identification of weaknesses and strengths are very crucial in any strategic planning in a business. This is because through this company analysis, the company can be able to state and obtain its goals and objectives, because if the strengths are maximized, the company can be able to attain its goals, which are the profit maximization and customer satisfaction (McGriff, 2012). These strengths are very useful for the company, since they can enable the company to summarize and clarify all the major key issues that face the company. These issues may include the strong competition in the automotive industry among others. They can also help the company to spot new business opportunities and fully use them. The unique resource strengths in Toyota Corporation has enabled the company to attain a sustainable competitive environment which is the prolonged benefit that the company possesses and achieves by the creation of new products and services which are valued and targeted by the market, and they cannot be replaced easily or even duplicated by the competition.