Toyota Motor Corporation is one of the leading car manufacturers in the world and grabs the number one position in the list of top 10 companies in terms of revenue and is followed by a Volkswagen AG and Ford with a vast difference. The revenue for the year 2009 was US$ 205,295.7 million (The Associated Press 2009, p. 2). The company has its headquarters in Japan. The company offers a very wide range of vehicles for target market ranging from minivehicles to SUVs. The company has a global presence and caters to customers in 140 countries across the globe through its quality human resource of 264,000 people (Datamonitor 2012, p. 7).
Competitor analysis
Global market scenario
The global automobile market has seen a downward trend. The growth in the industry has been fluctuating. The major reasons for this are the change in the global economic conditions over the years, the adverse hit on the financial market and the inevitable volatility in the commodity and exchange markets. As concerns the volume in the industry, the compound annual growth rate for the industry between the period 2005 and 2009 has been 1.9%. This is illustrated in the graph hereunder (Arashima 2011, p. 16).
Figure 1) Global automobiles market volume: vehicles million, 2005-09
When it comes to volumes sold in terms of demand for products, it has been viewed that the most dominating product category is passenger cars which account for 80.3% of the global automobile market. The remaining market is covered by Light Trucks and Motorcycles that have a share of 13.7% and 6% respectively (Arashima 2011, p. 16).
Europe is the largest market for the automobile industry with 35% of the total market share. Another 29.4% of the market share is with Asia-Pacific and then come United States of America and the rest of the world. The Middle Eastern market makes a significant part of the Asia-Pacific Market and is one with the most demand for cars.
Toyota in Qatar
Toyota's growth in Europe has been phenomenal. However, the global financial crisis is a dent on this growth in that the company is not able to make for the losses it booked during the recession period. For this reason, it wants to replicate this growth in the Qatar market. Qater is a new and potentially viable market. This is illustrated in the graph hereunder (Datanmonitor, 2011):
Figure 2) Global automobile market segmentation
From the above illustration, it is evident that Asia Pacific is a potentially viable market. Qatar is one of the hub of the Middle eastern market. Many car races and dessert safaris are arranged here. This means that the people who come in here for the desert safaris and ...