Abstract

The case discusses the challenges before Yasumori Ihara (Ihara), Executive Vice President of Toyota Motor Corporation (Toyota), who was in charge of the company’s emerging markets. In 2011, world’s largest automaker, Toyota, based in Tokyo, Japan, announced its Global Vision, in which the automaker targeted emerging markets and getting 50% of its global sales by 2015 from them. In 2012, emerging markets accounted for 42.5% of Toyota’s consolidated vehicle sales compared to 35% in 2008. The case goes on to discuss the strategies adopted by Toyota to increase its presence in emerging markets. As part of its efforts to strengthen the supply chain in the growing emerging market, Toyota expanded its production capacity in these markets from 540,000 vehicles in 2000 to 2.38 million vehicles by 2010. In 2013, it invested heavily in the emerging markets. However, the company had to contend with intense competition in emerging markets as well. Moreover, as of 2013, while developed economies seemed to be growing stronger, the emerging markets were underperforming. The sluggish growth and high volatility in emerging markets raised concerns among some analysts that these markets were no longer attractive enough. In addition to getting Toyota’s emerging markets strategy right, Ihara’s main responsibility was to reverse the disastrous sales decline in China.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Understand issues and challenges in developing and implementing an emerging markets strategy.
• Study and analyze the automobile industry in emerging markets and discuss and debate whether automakers should focus on these markets
• Evaluate the strategies adopted by Toyota to increase its presence in emerging markets

Keywords

Corporate-level and International strategy: The International value network, International strategies: The global-local dilemma, Multi-domestic strategy vs. Global strategy, Business-level strategy: Competitive strategy, ‘strategy clock’, Emerging markets strategy