Business Decision Making Project Part 3

Deidra Daniel

University of Phoenix

October 16, 2017

Business Decision Making: Case Study of Toyota

Introduction

Founded in 1937 in Japan, Toyota Motor Corporation is not only at the top of automobile manufacturing companies list but also among the top revenue earners. The multinational was established as an independent company by Kiichiro Toyoda and has grown to be the parent company to many subsidiaries today. Prior to this it was a division of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works (Advameg, Inc., 2017). Today Toyota has more than 50 overseas manufacturing companies in more than 25 nations and sells products to more than 170 countries around the globe. The Toyota Corporation has been in the forefront over the years in ensuring that their clients are satisfied with their various product categories. Moreover, Toyota has ensured that products conform to changing technology. For instance, the corporation has been the best seller of hybrid electric cars, a technology that is becoming ubiquitous in the automobile industry. The company has partnered with other big brands in the market such as Isuzu and Subaru. This automobile guru has also ventured in nonautomotive markets, for instance, in the real estate market with its Toyota Housing subsidiary (Advameg, Inc., 2017). Basically, the achievements of Toyota Motor Corporation cannot exhaust a list.

A problem facing Toyota Motor Corporation

Despite the numerous achievements and success stories at Toyota, the corporation, just like any other normal organization, is faced with a couple of problems. The main issue facing Toyota is a struggling brand image that was destroyed by massive recalls in 2009 and 2010. The recall were due to several cases of sudden unintended accelerations being reported (Sakurai, 2010). Actually, it was bad to the extent that some of its customers died due to sudden unintended acceleration. These recalls affected the trust customers had built on Toyota products. Sales were affected especially by more than 8 million vehicles being recalled in less than two years (Sakurai, 2010). Moreover, current customers still doubt the integrity of Toyota’s products and go to purchase from rivals. Although the sudden unintended acceleration was attributed to the drive’s floor mat falling on the gasoline pedal (Sakurai, 2010), it was later on found out that the acceleration was as a result of mechanical sticking. This spoilt the brands name globally. The issue was made worse by rumors that the company was aware of the fault prior to releasing the vehicles into the market. Now, Toyota has experienced a fall in revenues with margins as big as 30 percent and a struggling brand image that needs to be rebuilt (Sakurai, 2010). To date, Toyota has not fully recovered the lost consumer confidence it lost during the 2009 and 2010 recalls. The many jobs lost by their workers due to declined sales and closure of some manufacturing plants are yet to be recovered.

Research variable from problem

From the previous section, it is evident that Toyota’s struggling brand image had several effects on the corporation. In the attempt to save the brand image, a research study can be carried out to determine the impact of a brand image on the revenues of Toyota Company. In this case, therefore, one research variable the researchers would use is brand position. The brand image would be either correctly or incorrectly positioned.

Methods of data collection

The variable brand position identified above is qualitative in nature, that is, it’s not numerical and fits into categories. This therefore calls for the researcher to use qualitative data collection methods for the purpose of the research. In other words, the research would be qualitative in nature Braun, Clarke & Gray (2017) posits that qualitative research is helps researchers access the thoughts and feelings of research participants, thus enabling him/her develop an understanding of the meaning individuals attribute to their experiences. Braun et al. (2017) proceeds to assert that the success of a study is highly contingent on the data collected and how it is collected. This implies that correct inferences are made from findings whose data was correct and correctly obtained. Data may be correctly manipulated but however provide wrong conclusions since it was the wrong data or erroneous data being used. For the research on the brand position effect on Toyota’s revenue, the researcher would use face to face interviews and questionnaires to collect data from participants.

Face-to-face interviews

This kind of interviews allows a one-on-one engagement between the interviewer and the interviewee. They are the most common method of data collection especially where data being collected is highly personalized or confidential. Interviews involve the researcher or the interviewer asking the participant who is the interviewee questions, and the latter responding to the questions. Interviews may be semi-structured or closed ones. Semi-structured interviews have questions contain open-ended questions but the researcher asks the same questions to all respondents (Braun et al., 2017). On the other hand, closed interviews provide answers from which the interviewee can choose for the questions asked. Closed interviews enable ease of analysis while open-ended questions provide detailed responses. Similar to any other method of data collection in qualitative research, interviews also have their merits and demerits. Face-to- face interviews are advantageous in that the interviewer is allowed to probe further by asking follow up questions (Braun et al., 2017). Moreover, data obtained through such interviews is highly personalized. On the other end, interviews especially face-to-face interviews are subject to several constraints such as distance, language and culture; barriers.

Questionnaires

Questionnaires are used to provide standardized data from a large number of people. In other words, same information is collected in the same way. According to Braun et al. (2017), researchers mainly use questionnaires in order to make generalizations, therefore the questionnaire being based on carefully selected samples. Questionnaires have the same questions which are asked in the order and in the same way to ensure gathering of similar information. Questionnaires may take different forms such as those filled by participants, questions asked by the interviewer in a structured way, postal questionnaire, self-administered, telephone or email questionnaire (Braun et al., 2017). The main advantage of using questionnaires to collect data is that they are cost-efficient as large volumes of data can be obtained without a lot of expenses. Moreover questionnaires provide speedy results. On the other hand, questionnaires can lack conscientious responses as well as have difficulty in understanding and interpreting responses.

Ensuring reliability and validity of data

Guest, MacQueen & Namey (2012) describe reliability as simply the repeatability of findings. Reliability thus tries to answer the question whether if the study is to be conducted again, would it yield similar results as before or not. Validity basically refers to the credibility or believability of the research (Guest et al., 2012). In order to test for validity and reliability the researcher will use inter-rater reliability and test-retest reliability. Inter –rater will be used to test the extent to which different raters agree when measuring the same phenomena while test-retest compares results from initial test with repeated measures later on.

References