Contents
Introduction 3
The central issue 3
Mercedes-Benz’s Management Goals 3
Management Constraints 3
Alternatives to dealing with management constraints 4
Implementation plan 5
Conclusion 5
References 6
Introduction
(Albright, 2008, pp. 1) carried out a case study on the Mercedes Benz’s All Activity Vehicle (AAV) that the company developed as one of the new vehicle models it introduced into the market to counter the negative performance results it posted in the wake of the early 1990s recession that led to a dip in its sales and consequent losses.
The central issue
The central issue that (Albright, 2008, pp. 1) intends to bring out in the case study is how a company like Mercedes-Benz can overcome problems of a diminishing market share and high production costs to ultimately increase their vehicle sales by developing new vehicle models, that are targeted at emerging market segments and niches while ensuring that the product development costs are minimized. As a result of the great recession of the early 1990s, Mercedes made losses for the first time in its history. There was thus a need to develop a new strategy to overturn the results and get back to its profitability making history.
Mercedes-Benz’s Management Goals
According to (Albright, 2008, pp. 1), the goals of Mercedes-Benz’s management are to increase its market share through identification of new market segments and niches of customers and target them with new models in the most cost effective way while maintaining their internal standards of quality and customer satisfaction. They intended to achieve these goals through globalization and establishment of manufacturing plants as close as possi...
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...ies need to make bold steps in addressing challenges present in the environments in which they operate. It is also important to incorporate consumers’ participation in product design and specifications by explaining product concepts and ideas to them and seeking their ideas and suggestions. This ensures that the final product is acceptable to them as they will feel they own the product and thus become encouraged to buy it. It is also important to develop seamless relationships with suppliers of product components and systems and ensure that they are involved from the early stages of new product development so that they understand and co-own the production process to avoid deviations from projections and targets in terms of costs of productions.
References
Albright, T. (2008). Mercedes-Benz All Activity vehicle (AAV). IMA Educational Case Journal, 1(1), 1-4.
BMW having high market share in European and U.S luxury car markets, started facing issues with launch product qualities and also facing a fierce competition from Japanese producers. Currently the market share was still stable but the rigorous growth of Japanese producers would affect BMW in future. These Japanese competitors had set higher standards of conformance.
Achieving world class business performance is a major challenge in today’s society. Manufacturing companies continue to face increased competition and globalization from its competitors. (1, p. 148). The automotive industry is one of the most volatile manufacturing industries that we have, which was evident in the 2008 – 2010 automotive industry crisis. (2) This global financial downturn served notice to the American automotive manufactures to raise the bar, in order to achieve word class business performance. General Motors, one of the country’s largest automotive manufactures, had to receive a government bailout to survive. During this time many with the corporation asked themselves, if we were a world class business, would we be facing this pending crisis. The answer was a resounding “NO”. General Motors has come out of bankruptcy and is focused on being a world-class business organization.
The business world is becoming more and more heated up as a result of the ever increasing levels of competition. Each and every industry is witnessing an alarming rate in the number of competitors that exist within it. This is further fueled by the increasing world population, which brings about the speculations that the future of the market is rather bright. It is interesting as to how many things are nowadays done based on speculations and future expectations. In the turmoil of it all, marketing has been established as a very effective tool used by various firms to gain competitive advantage over others. As such, each organization has been able to develop its own marketing strategy based on the various things that affect the industry and the nature of business undertaken. Theories and practical research are two major items that form the basis of development of marketing strategies. Rolls-Royce is one of the many organizations that have been in big business for a long time. As such, the company has been able to identify major areas of strength and weakness when it comes to marketing.
The American auto industry is in a crisis, their vehicles are not in demand and they need government bailouts to keep their businesses afloat. American vehicles are not on demand because people want fuel-efficient, the car companies that are not at the point of bankruptcy, longer lasting vehicles, and hybrid cars. The American car companies are at a point of bankruptcy and people don’t want to buy cars from a company that may not be there in a couple of months. The foreign car companies are doing well and they much more dependable now that we are in an economic crisis. American cars are not fuel-efficient, not as long lasting, and don’t make many hybrids, so this affects their business negatively. I got some ideas that will make American car companies be on top of the industry again.
The world of technology is ever changing and advancing. With the automotive industry in play technology is constantly surpassing what is available today with what can be done for tomorrow. Technology and the automotive industry go hand in hand with constant improvement to components of cars. Due to technology advancement there is competition within the car industry, especially between American car companies and European car companies. European car companies provide their buyers with innovative variety and revolutionary luxuries. European car technology is superior to American car technology due to their safety, entertainment, and luxury features.
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, shortly known as BMW, is a German manufacturer of luxurious automobiles and motorcycles. BMW group is not simply one name: it is also the parent company of other premium brands such as the MINI, the Rolls-Royce and the motorcycling company Husqvarna. For the purpose of providing a maximum of details, this essay will just focus on the automobile part of BMW as it is more significant than the motorcycle segment and since they have a lot of overlapping factors.
Ford’s production plants rely on very high-tech computers and automated assembly. It takes a significant financial investment and time to reconfigure a production plant after a vehicle model is setup for assembly. Ford has made this mistake in the past and surprisingly hasn’t learned the valuable lesson as evidence from the hybrid revolution their missing out on today. Between 1927 and 1928, Ford set in motion their “1928 Plan” of establishing worldwide operations. Unfortunately, the strategic plan didn’t account for economic factors in Europe driving the demand for smaller vehicles. Henry Ford established plants in Europe for the larger North American model A. Their market share in 1929 was 5.7% in England and 7.2% in France (Dassbach, 1988). Economic changes can wreak havoc on a corporation’s bottom line and profitability as well as their brand.
Like other organisations around the world there are ups and downs in the organisation that will either bring about strategic accomplishment or strategic failure, what is strategic failure? This is when an organisation’s process of defining strategy, or direction on making decisions on the allocating of resources to pursue the strategy fails. Hence in this piece of work we are going to look at the extent of failure of marriage between Daimler-Benz and Chrysler the result of strategic misconception, mismanagement or badluck and also look at what light does the apparent success of the marriage of necessity between Renault and Nissan shed on this strategic failure. Moreover firstly looking at the potential strategic failures that an organisation can face are the difference in corporate culture, mismanagement or ownership structure and legal environment may pose significant challenges in an international business.
In the modern world of conducting business, any company that wishes to succeed must differentiate its products or services from others in the industry. Differentiation makes it possible for consumers to point out notable differences between one company’s products as compared to those of competitors. Differentiation helps companies build brand loyalty as the uniqueness keeps customers fixed on a particular product. BMW is one of the most popular automakers in the world today. It definitely uses differentiation as a strategy to beat off competition by building products that are innovative, detailed and incomparable to those of competitors.
The automotive industry is critical to the South African economy and/or if figuratively put,the heartbeat of the South African economy. As the industry is big in its magnitude,the challenges faced are also great and vast even somewhat complex if critically analysed.In a global context, vast number of occurrences in the automotive industry encounters a large number of challenges and setbacks.Some predicaments are of OEM’s trying to diminish production and reduce manufacturing costs.They are required to enhance quality, improve styling, escalating organizational e...
Schmidt, J. (2010, September 29). Strategy and targets of mercedes-benz cars sales and marketing. Retrieved from http://www.daimler.com/Projects/c2c/channel/documents/1931898_Daimler_UBS_Paris_DJSchmidt_Handout.pdf
Since the beginning of 2000, FAW-Volkswagen has grown rapidly in the face of international competition. Before 2004, the company used the traditional value-chain model, which is based on sales’ production (Mazen, 2010). This is a risky model for a company to follow in a volatile market. Use of the forecasting model provides, no analytical evidence to support different options. Both marketing people and financial management people are under great pressure to balance costs and profits. As a Chinese automaker, FAW-Volkswagen didn’t want to have a passive and disadvantaged position in the industry, so the R& D department began to analyze the build-to-order model of foreign auto manufacturers, and adopted a new value-chain model on this
A new product on the market may look all shiny and new and be appealing to customers but what is the story behind the product and what is the underlying future for this product. Where were the original materials from? Is it all legalised? Where did the manufacturing take place? How was the product manufactured? These are all questions that are never properly addressed in the design industry and are just simply overlooked. They are the aspects of designing and producing a new product that need to be carefully looked at to make a good design, and to make sustainable products.
The customer need and the interaction to the product are mostly concerned by the producer.
AutoEdge is facing crisis since millions of its automobiles has had to be recalled due to product quality issues. Many things should be considered in order to implement a proactive response to rectify the situation. As the research analysis, I have been tasked will helping to rebuild AutoEdge’s reputation as well as to reduce and control operating costs. When making any decision on implementing change within the organization market analysis must look at the market structure of the organization. Market structure is made up of the relationship that exists between buyers, sellers, competition, product differentiation, and ease of entry into and exit from the market. The article “Review of Market Structure” (n.d.) defines market structure as the “microeconomic characteristics of different markets” and include such elements as competition level, high versus low entry barriers, and scale (Review of Market Structure, n.d.) To make the decision the decision to relocate, AutoEdge must analysis and evaluate of market structure. This report will discuss the four different types of market structures: monopoly, oligopoly, monopolistic competition, and pure competition. Additionally, it will outline the type of market structure AutoEdge fits into, how that market structure impacts the level of competition, elasticity of demand, price, and position in the industry.