The global market is a tough nut to crack. A company or an organisation must be competitive enough in order to penetrate this market. Today’s competition for business supremacy has always been a battle. It’s a battle on who will be the best, a battle that the end winner will be determine by the organisation’s ability to compete against other competitors. Competition is like a bottle neck road, who ever goes in first always have the advantage against the other. Because the domestic and international market undergoes a never ending phase, an organisation must be capable to adapt to these constant changes. A company’s capacity to change should be given consideration. Discrepancy between an organisation capacity and the demands of its customers results in an inefficiency, either in under-utilised company resources or unfulfilled customers. Maybe, most of the organisations today want to initiate a management system and strategy that could maintain the organisations’ capability, strength and competitiveness. And this is important for the management teams and the organisations per se that they would always be open minded for changes that they might encounter in order to cope and adapt to the latest development that are happening within and outside their environment. Businesses are continuously evolving just to maintain progress and being competitive.
Like any other business strategies, assessment of product quality and development of a business has also been gaining recognition among contemporary businesses today. Generally, this business strategy especially to those operating in global setting is being applied by various organisations in order to assess their respective progress and development. In the administrative point of view, evaluation of business strategy is a sub-system that needs to be formulated, handled and assessed periodically in order to assure the attainment of the desired outcome; it is a process which measures the competence or efficacy of a business in a particular aspect. Basically, the product development strategy is one of the major priorities for all businesses. Hence, measuring and evaluating it is essential so as to assure goal achievement and constant growth.
In this paper, the concept and reasons behind the success of Mitsubishi in developing a good brand in Hong Kong as they produces and manufactures Electric Vehicles will be assessed. Basically, electric vehicles are vehicles that run off rechargeable batteries, electric motors and motor controllers. These cars produce no exhaust fumes and minimum pollution if it is charged from most types of renewable energy. The Electric car particularly the cars manufactured by Mitsubishi runs very quietly, do not have transmissions and save energy using regenerative brakes. The batteries in the electric car have to be recharged regularly but do not require any attention. Actually, Mitsubishi electric cars have two ways of recharging batteries, drivers can either charge it from a power grid at home or go to a shops recharging point. The charging time varies depending on the type of battery and how many kilowatts the outlet is. If the batteries were charging at a seven kilowatt – hour pack it would take about at an hour for them to be fully charged.
Despite that Mitsubishi electric cars are priced expensively, there are lots of consumers considering buying electric cars from them. Mitsubishi electric cars are known to be nature friendly, economical in terms of fuel consumption and consisting of safe driving features. With this, this proposed project will assess the reason behind the success of Mitsubishi in developing a good brand in Hong Kong as they produces and manufactures Electric Vehicles.
Objectives and Research Questions
Objectives
This study will investigate and evaluate the reasons behind the success of Mitsubishi in developing a good brand in Hong Kong. Essentially, this research aspires to study the topic through reviewing related articles and also by getting the perceptions of knowledgeable individuals regarding the topic through surveys. These individuals are the electric vehicle consumers/customers of Mitsubishi in Hong Kong.
The major objective of this study is to observe and determine the business efforts of Mitsubishi to the purchasing motive, loyalty and preferences of consumers in buying their electric vehicles. Moreover, this study will focus on the following objectives:
1. To examine the awareness of the consumers about Mitsubishi’s electric vehicles.
2. To examine if these efforts of Mitsubishi in Hong Kong affect the purchasing motive, preferences and loyalty of their consumers in buying their electric vehicle.
3. To assess the success of Mitsubishi’s electric vehicles brand in Hong Kong.
4. To review the responses of Mitsubishi’s electric vehicles consumers.
5. To examine the underlying issues concerning the creation and manufacturing of Mitsubishi’s electric vehicle.
Research Questions
In order to complete the goals of this particular academic activity as well as to set the objectives of the study, the following research questions will be presented and discussed in the entirety of the research paper focusing on the success of Mitsubishi’s electric vehicle in Hong Kong.
1. What is the history of the electric vehicle in Hong Kong? How did it grow and develop into the demand of people that we know today?
2. What are the impacts of the Mitsubishi’s electric vehicle in Hong Kong and its entire automobile business?
3. What are the features of Mitsubishi’s latest electric vehicle in Hong Kong? How do buyers and car owners benefit from buying Mitsubishi’s electric vehicle?
4. What are the underlying issues concerning the creation and manufacturing of Mitsubishi’s electric vehicle?
5. What are the vulnerabilities of Mitsubishi’s electric vehicle?
Critical Literature Review
Electric vehicles of Mitsubishi are considered to be one of the most important means of success of the company in global market ("The Mitsubishi Motors Revitalisation Plan: Toward Revitalisation", 2005). However, with the advent of business environment of globalisation and the competition in this industry has become fierce, automobile industries’ organisational performance and their competitive advantage.
From the presentation of Proff (2002), he identifies that globalisation has lowered trade barriers in different economies making it easier for investments to flow across markets. Through benefiting from involvement in other economies the flow of capital from one economy to another intensified. Access to raw materials and resources, cost savings from lowering labour and operating costs, and expansion to other markets prove the benefit for investors when engaging in foreign investments. Basically, globalisation and trade reform are credited with improved income growth and poverty reduction in much of developing world ("The Mitsubishi Motors Revitalisation Plan: Toward Revitalisation", 2005). Empirical evidence points to the growth-inducing effects of open economies, where long term growth is like the rising tide, lifting all the boats, including those of the poor. Reality, however, is often more complicated. Mitsubishi have not reaped the perceived benefits of globalisation in their corporate strategy but instead considering the advantage of their current business strategy i.e. creation of electric vehicles that is known to its quality and great number of benefits (Mitsubishi, 2011).
In addition, globalisation and information technology are at the core of the Mitsubishi operation. Mitsubishi as part of global business climate embraces efficiency and innovativeness in order to ensure continuous existence and maintain competitive advantage. Knowledge is an important strategic resource (Hitt, Ireland, & Hoskisson, 2003). As argued by Hitt, Ireland, & Hoskisson, (2003), knowledge workers have become one of the most valuable assets to the success of not only for Mitsubishi but also to other companies around the globe because learning is continuous as well as changes in technology. Automation is important for lead-time, innovation, and quality because production is controlled automatically to perform on a consistent basis (Sebastiani et. al. 2006).
With respect to the business practices in Mitsubishi particularly in accordance to product-related core competencies, their concept of business strategy establishes long-term interests with expectations of high returns on investment. Actually, Mitsubishi’s business strategy can be first characterised process on the regional stage with the assistance of Japanese government and through the beliefs of Mitsubishi’s founder (Mitsubishi, 2011). As seen in the company’s philosophy, Mitsubishi’s product-related core competencies lies on the pursuit of impossible dreams as an empowering force, capable of producing revolutionary ideas like the production of electric vehicles. And with this consideration and belief, Mitsubishi’s trade administrations and making deeper assimilation of detach economies on the height becomes apparent. During the first decade of Mitsubishi, Mitsubishi’s business strategy conforms to the intensification of investment and intra-regional trade, each suggests a procedure of ‘deeper’ behind-the-border industrial incorporation ("The Mitsubishi Motors Revitalisation Plan: Toward Revitalisation", 2005). Within this course of strategy, it is seen as a power that assists in guiding the people and economies resources into actions where they are most expected to stand out. In basic assumptions, the Mitsubishi’s business level strategy as a power that alleviates the outcomes of corporate strategy by pooling governmental policies and also pays off for the loss of national policy sovereignty ("The Mitsubishi Motors Revitalisation Plan: Toward Revitalisation", 2005). Mitsubishi’s business level strategy does not actually alleviate the outcomes of corporate strategy but instead it guides the organisation to grasp process-related core capabilities. This creates the corporate strategy of Mitsubishi as a training ground or an arena for an organisation to learn the context of business level strategy ("The Mitsubishi Motors Revitalisation Plan: Toward Revitalisation", 2005).
When the movement towards learning oriented forms of work organisation started with field experiments and other cases, a process of "bottom-up" learning as part of process-related core capabilities was introduced and the challenges posed by such a process are dominating the agenda today as in the period immediately after the first experimental changes ("The Mitsubishi Motors Revitalisation Plan: Toward Revitalisation", 2005). What differs is first and foremost the view on how bottom-up learning can take place. For a long time the idea that single cases could be abstracted from their contexts and provide a basis directly for learning processes involving many organisations was maintained (History of Mitsubishi Motor, 2011). Actually, what happens today is first and foremost a break with these perspectives to instead build the learning processes bottom-up without shortcuts.
In Hong Kong, new demands are placed on all the actors involved and how well they are met today and will be met in the future differs as well. One of the challenges is to handle the notion of learning region as an evolutionary phenomenon, often emerging from a smaller group of actors, growing through network formations and eventually including political-administrative actors (History of Mitsubishi Motor, 2011). From this platform the growth can continue into formations where several units join each other to form broader regions. Fixed boundaries and given administrative dividing lines will block this kind of development. Learning regions will have to be defined according to the learning process and this has in itself fluid boundaries.
From this, it is evident that Mitsubishi’s creations of electric vehicles are becoming the trend in the current era. And this trend continuously grows because of global business strategy. In response to this global business strategy issues, Mitsubishi operating in other countries like Hong Kong has an excellent advantage ("The Mitsubishi Motors Revitalisation Plan: Toward Revitalisation", 2005). Basically, the eagerness of Mitsubishi to operate across borders was there it always involves two dimension i.e. change in economic operations of various countries, and change in the participants of global economic operations.
Increasingly, Mitsubishi recognises that sustainability is a major force linking corporate social responsibility with the creation of shareholder value (Galbraith, 2001). Providing additional force have been legislative requirements this company to disclose environmental and sustainability performance. Management practices of the company had helped them throughout the years. Through direct corporate intervention or centralisation that the company had used its ability to capture the attention of the market had been going strong. As a result, Mitsubishi have implemented their corporate social duties and responsibilities very well to ensure that they are managing the needs of various internal and external stakeholders of their motors and vehicles, and they also balance their actual and perceived corporate social duties and responsibilities within their performance through the use of appropriate external reporting within the company (Mitsubishi, 2011). Having a strong authentically trusting relationship with investors has helped the company weather its own downturns. The company had also established an ongoing personal relationship with the individual decision-maker so as to assure that they probably meet the needs of their stakeholders.
In accordance to the past practices of Mitsubishi, Japan is one of the known highly industrialised countries in the world. Basically, Mitsubishi is one of the recognised business leaders in terms of electric vehicle car manufacturing, leader in innovations, and uses participative leadership. Even though the Japanese are considered to be quite diverse as compared to other countries in terms of cultural values, Japanese leaders appear to use an array of leadership styles (both task-oriented/autocratic and relationship-oriented/participative) in a manner similar to other leaders.
As for the business unit level, Mitsubishi in Hong Kong sees to it that they position the business against its rivals (Mitsubishi Motors, 2011). This is done by dividing their products into different business portfolio so as to have concentration for each of the car products. As for the organisation, the Mitsubishi Motors had focused to its core business and competencies, the company had built its own strengths through the use of the strategies that their CEO had been delivered (Mitsubishi Motors, 2011). Mitsubishi Motors had adapted to the market environment since their main focus is to satisfy the needs of the target market and be innovative in creating new products that will soothe the taste of their customers and acquiring and merging to different companies that will help them promote the products to the market, and finally the Company had kept its eyes focused on the bottom line (Mitsubishi Motors, 2011). Since the world fast changing and different technology had been arising, many companies have find ways in order to cope with the technological advances. Some say automating right from the start is the best way, building strategic business processes from the outset with scalability built in for the future. This alleviates the pain of trying to add technology later when maintaining design momentum is crucial (Mazzarella, 2003). Others believe that the business should grow before attempting to include technology. At that point a mishmash of manual processes could exist to constrain a growing business. Mitsubishi Motors have make sure that they used the proper technology for them to meet the needs of the stakeholders, by doing this they used office automation in handling its different portfolios and group collaboration software to easily access on different managers of the business when having a business meetings and conferences. This software arrangement is advantageous because it does not require software to be installed or maintained at the business site. They use advance technology in making cars and motorcycle. As the automobile industry goes through the growing pains, new and old businesses can benefit from the right tools. When looking at technology, strategise and work together with your vendor or consultant because new ideas and easier ways of working always emerge (Mazzarella, 2003).
Lastly, with the functional level of the organisation which focuses on the issues related to business processes and the value chain. Through different growth strategies, distinct capital structures, and focused management teams, Mitsubishi Motors can offer a compelling value to the market, exciting revenue and profit growth opportunities, and a rewarding environment for employees (Mazzarella, 2003). Therefore, as a responsible company, Mitsubishi Motors will enhance shareholder value and ensure a better future for the shareholders, customers, and employees. With this also, the company is confident that the combination of their business strategy, company culture, the talented teams, and the excellent brands portfolio will deliver profit for the whole company. The company’s marketing, finance operations, human resources have helped the company to be developed strategies which is efficient and effective that made Mitsubishi Motors a successful corporation. The employees and the leaders of the company have involved in higher level of strategies by providing useful input to the business level and corporate level of Mitsubishi Motors. Furthermore, the employees and personnel of the company had this strategy of providing information on resources that the company needs. Mitsubishi Motors see to it that their employees will be loyal to them by providing them benefits that they deserve. Employees determine business success by making companies work, defining them with faces and voices, and impacting customer loyalty (Sebastiani, et. al., 2006). Because of this, Mitsubishi Motors make it sure that the company understand the issues of employee loyalty and retention for them take concrete steps to stop its harmful effects (Galbraith, 2001). Mitsubishi Motors promote its ethical and responsible decision-making by establishing a code of conduct to guide the directors, the chief executive officer (or equivalent), the chief financial officer (or equivalent) and any other key executives as to the practices necessary to maintain confidence in the company's integrity, and the responsibility and accountability of individuals for reporting or investigating reports of unethical practices (Galbraith, 2001).
Research Methods
This particular research activity will be conducted using the guidelines of both the quantitative and the qualitative research approaches. In this light, the research study will make use of the survey and the interview techniques as methods for the data gathering activities (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2003). The qualitative aspect of researcher will be used in order to provide in-depth discussion regarding the success of Mitsubishi’s electric vehicles in Hong Kong as well as its implications to the automobile industry in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, the quantitative part of the research activity will make possible the quantification of concepts and ideas that are otherwise immeasurable within the qualitative paradigm (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2003). The utilisation of both the quantitative and the qualitative research approaches will be used to provide holistic and comprehensive understanding on the selected research topic. Therefore, discussions will reflect the use of both these academic research approaches.
The survey method will be facilitated through the use of survey forms and questionnaires. This will include inquiries on the general characteristics, particularly the socio-demographic information of the selected research participants. Quantifiable inquiries will be likewise contained in the survey forms and questionnaire regarding the impact of the technological efforts of Mitsubishi in creating their electric vehicles in general on the current business practices and approaches. The survey forma will be distributed to electric car owners who bought their cars in Mitsubishi.
As stated, the respondents will compose of Mitsubishi’s electric vehicles car buyers in Hong Kong. A total of thirty research participants will compose the sample for the survey method. These thirty participants are made sure buyers of Mitsubishi’s electric vehicles. This will enable exhaustive inquiries regarding the success of Mitsubishi’s electric vehicles in Hong Kong. The interview method, on the other hand, will be conducted with business personalities who are considered as experts in the analysis of the trends that have transpired in the HK automobile arena. The informants will be composed of five personalities from the academe, automobile industry, and other business fields who will be able to give light on the issues that surround the current practice of Mitsubishi’s electric vehicles in Hong Kong.
The research activity will also make use of secondary data from academic journals, books, and other publications that could provide additional information regarding electric vehicles. Published as well as unpublished research papers that were previously conducted which likewise focus on the impacts of Mitsubishi’s efforts towards their success in Hong Kong will be reviewed. These additional data and information will also be used to support as well as contradict the findings of the study depending on the credibility of the authors and the journals where they were found published. The use of secondary data and information will likewise serve as validity and reliability indicators of the researcher to ensure that the collected data from the survey and the interview methods could be used to strengthen the findings and results of the study. This will hopefully come up to unbiased presentation and discussion of the collected data and information from the indicated research methodologies.
Project Plan
References
"History of Mitsubishi Motor" (2011). history, Accessed: February 15, 2011. from http://www.mitsubishi-motors.com/en/corporate/aboutus/history/1870/index.html.
Galbraith, J.R. (2001). Designing Organisations: An Executive Briefing on Strategy, Structure and Process, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Hitt, M.A., Ireland, R.D., & Hoskisson, R.E. (2003), Strategic Management: Competitiveness and Globalisation, 5th ed., South-Western, Singapore.
Mitsubishi (2011). Company Profile. Accessed: February 15, 2011. from < http://www.mitsubishi.com/e/group/about.html>.
Mitsubishi Motors (2011). Company Profile. Accessed: February 15, 2011. from < http://www.mitsubishi-motors.com/en/corporate/aboutus/profile/index.html>.
"The Mitsubishi Motors Revitalisation Plan: Toward Revitalisation" (2005). Mitsubishi Motors Annual Report 2005. Accessed: February 15, 2011. from <http://www.mitsubishi-motors.com/corporate/ir/share/pdf/e/annual2005-06.pdf>
Mazzarella, J. (2003). Automation: New vs. Established. New York. pp 1
Proff, H. (2002). Business unit strategies between regionalisation and globalisation, International Business Review 11 (2002) 231–250.
Saunders M., Lewis P. & Thornhill A. (2003). Research Methods for Business Students (3rd), Financial Times Prentice Hall, Harlow
Sebastiani, A., Joseph, S., Marotta, J., Grattan, F & Nemic M. (2006). Enterprise Models Project: General Motors, Western Michigan University. Accessed: February 15, 2010. from http://homepages.wmich.edu/~a2sebast/Project5_GM.htm#_Toc89535999
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