GENERAL MOTORS

General Motors

General Motors

General Motors is the world's largest automotive corporation operating in over 70 countries with a presence in more than 200 countries, more than 260 major subsidiaries, and a total of 395,000 employees worldwide which translate into global opportunities that span the planet. Founded in 1908, GM has been the global automotive sales leader since 1931. GM today has manufacturing operations in 32 countries and its vehicles are sold in more than 190 countries.

In Europe, America and Japan the three developed areas, the automotive leaders like GM, Ford, Fiat, Volkswagen, Honda, Toyota, etc...not only try for keep their market share domestically and occupy as much as the market as they can, but also at the same time compete with emerging countries like Korea and Mexico at lower price products (Tittemore 2004). In dealing with new growing markets like Asia-Pacific, East Europe and South America, those leading companies actively start to look for collaboration with local national industries while they still have to compete for more market share. They are like to abandon the traditional way which is to transfer outdated automobile to developing countries' markets, instead of that, exporting new technology and new concept automobiles to improve the local level of car industry become a mission statement of those who are leading the automotive industry localization. Beside that, the impact from developing economic countries on medium or lower price products can become a positive influence to the world leaders. Although it is impossible to avoid the multilevel structure of world auto industry, up to date, US, Japan, Germany, Italy and France are still playing important roles with their competitive strength and advanced technologies.

Furthermore, General Motor is trying to reduce its production cost which comes to cost leadership strategy. This strategy requires high volume of standardised products, so that the firm can take advantage of economies of scale and experiences curve effects (Brodie 2001). If General Motor adopts this marketing strategy, they may still face problem because they are unable to build customers loyalty. Toyota and other competitors are promoting friendly environment car which help them to gain higher sales. Therefore, General Motor is facing difficulty to boost their sales.

So, General Motor should keep abreast of the factors that determine success and excellence. Besides, they need to able to deal with questions of efficiency and effectiveness by means of an internal appraisal of strengths and weaknesses.

In addition, General Motor can ...