Toyota is one of the strongest automobile brands in the world and has come out at the highest selling automaker in the past year replacing General Motors. To keep the momentum of its sales going, Toyota is re-aligning its strategies related to the emerging markets like India, China, Russia and Brazil. The emerging counties and South Asian markets do make a large part of Toyota’s global sales and the growth in these markets is much higher compared to more mature markets of Europe and America. To keep the sales momentum up and retain its numero-uno position, Toyota has announced that it will introduce 6 more sub-compact global cars by 2015 which will add to its sales in the emerging markets across the world. As per the global product strategy of Toyota, it has planned a total of 8 small cars two of which are Etios series cars which are already sold in India and South Africa in good numbers and with new products added to its small cars and sub-compact portfolio, the sales numbers will soar further.
If we talk for an example, there is no small car below Etios Liva and no sedan between the Toyota Etios and Toyota Corolla in India. These two segments are high sales volume segments in India mainly captured by large players like Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai India. If Toyota India launches a small car competing the Alto or Wagon R, and a sedan competing the Hyundai Verna Fluidic, it can gain some more volumes in the market. Toyota has recently launched a small car Pixis for Japanese domestic market which is a fuel efficient small car. A similar car can make good sales volumes in India, China, and other Asian countries as well.
Toyota hopes to capture more share of its global sales from emerging markets by 2015 which will help Toyota remain on the high growth curve for rest of the decade. The economic situation in the European counties is not very upbeat which has reduced the growth potential on the European markets. The US economy is on the recovery path from its slowdown phase which started few years back and is also a comparatively slow growth market for the automobile industry as a whole. By 2015, Toyota expected to get about half of its sales from the emerging markets which is at about 45% in the past year while it was as low as 18.6% in the year 2000. We will keep you posted on the new car developments from Toyota, stay tuned to us for latest updates.
source – Business Standard
