Case III: LATE MOVER ADVANTAGE?

Questions

1. Why has the ‘late corner’s strategy’ of Toyota failed in China, though it succeeded in India?

2. Why has Toyota failed to capture the Chinese market? Why is it trailing behind its rivals?

1.ans – Toyota failed to get a strong hold in the Chinese market due to poor understanding of the market. The reasons being mainly due to high pricing of the vehicle with which it entered the market in China as Toyota followed the price skimming strategy while entering China. The existing car companies like Volkswagen, Honda, and Hyundai had priced their vehicles keeping in mind the price sensitive customers in China.
Toyota entered into a joint venture with First Auto Works Group
In Japanies …show more content…

The research team delved deep into the psyche of the Indian housewife, her habits, her attitude towards life, her schedule, her every day concerns and most importantly, her innate ‘laundry wisdom. The key finding however was the pride in self-done washing. * the break-through insight used by Whirlpool for the design of all its washing machines, which adopted a ‘1-2, 1-2 Hand Wash Agitator System’ to mimic the preferred hand wash technique. * WOI USP being” Product Innovation”- first it came up with fully automatic machine, with the hand-wash agitator. Then came the deluxe model with a ‘hot wash’ function. And automatic washing machine, with ‘Agisoak’ as a catchword and later semi-automatic with hot wash was introduced. * WOI also came-up with a jingle “Whirlpool Whirlpool” which proved to be a good brand recall among the consumers.

2. What pricing strategy did WOI follow? What, according to you, could have been the appropriate strategy?
Ans. WOI followed Penetrating pricing while entering into the Indian markets. Penetrating pricing means using lower initial prices to capture a large market share, which was exactly how WOI followed. And also since the market pioneer, Videocon priced its products lower so to be in power WOI priced its products accordingly.

3. What lessons can other white goods manufacturers learn from WOI?

* Ans. One important aspect while entering into new