The stakeholders of Toyota Motor group

Describe about the Communication in Business for Target Market and Convincing.

Introduction

A business organization establishes apt communication plans to reach to its target market and convince them in the case of buying any particular product. A communication plan is therefore considered to be an art of making a firm relationship with the target audience to meet the profit margin with the help of advertisements, e-mails and public relations (Argenti, 2015). In the current year, Toyota Motor group has decided to launch a handful of new cars such as HiLux, C-HR, for which the company needs to set communication plans befitting their profit goal.

The purpose of the following report is to make a suitable business plan for the Toyota motor group who are currently going to launch an innovative car. Before make the communication scheme, the assignment has evaluated some key aspects to determine an apt plan for promotions such as the internal and external stakeholders, scopes and objectives of the communication scheme. Additionally, the report has identified formal and informal channels of communication for Toyota and their certain advantages and disadvantages. The entire assignment has been conducted from a head of communication that has been requested to establish a report outlining the structure of a proposed plan for promotion. Hence, the report is going to give a commentary on the evaluation of the effectiveness of the communication scheme.

As per Guffey & Loewy (2012), stakeholders play potential roles regarding determining the business growth of a particular organization. An automobile company like Toyota determines the demands based on the disposable income, product innovation and prices of vehicle and fuel. In the current business scenario, the automobile industry is suffering from the rising price value of steel and plastics those are the main instigators behind the high price value of cars and other vehicle devices (Cavusgil et al., 2014). Similarly like other leading automobile enterprises, Toyota motors have been another victim of the sudden revenue fall of about 15.4% in the year 2009.

For Toyota, employees are probably the most significant aspect as stakeholders. The company believes that their current success in the automobile market majorly relies on the quality performance of the employees. Hence, the company prefers to provide on development job system and individual training courses like management development, technical development for the working employees which help the staffs to find better opportunities in future (www.toyota.com.au, 2016). Additionally, the company provides satisfactory salary and job security to their employees. However, the company only gives placements to those candidates who have growth potentials.

Internal stakeholders of Toyota

Business partners and shareholders are probably the second most significant stakeholders of Toyota Motors as, without the help of massive capital investment, the company could not have succeeded. Toyota’s business partners include suppliers and dealers, and the company prefers to keep a firm relationship with them as a consequent to which the trading partners have developed certain guidelines for purchasing. However, it is a fortunate fact that suppliers’ power for the company is weak as the company uses various metals for the production. In the year 2000, the company has gone through a recession which the company tactfully handled with the support of their investors (toyota-industries.com, 2016). Shareholders of Toyota motors are accountable to hold the stability of the business operations and supports to earn a sustainable growth by advancing the virtuous circle.

On the other hand, the Toyota motor corporation is another pivotal stakeholder for Toyota as they hold the entire control of all the regional franchises of the company. The company strongly depends on the communities as Toyota has established several initiative programs such as education facility for safe driving courses under the initiative of Go Safely (toyota-industries.com, 2016).

External stakeholders of Toyota are majorly dominated by the local as well as national communities around the world. For instance, community sponsorship and corporate sponsorships like racing series sponsored by Toyota, Emirates team affect the communities and influence upon their buying preference. Toyota motors give a significant importance to its customers, and the company believes that demands of the customers should be considered first (Sunder, 2016). To reach customer satisfaction, the company gives stress upon upgrading the qualities of their product, sales, and service. According to the Toyota management, work quality is the key to winning customer satisfaction. Following this fundamental concept, the company prefers to make customization and produce cars with different price range.

However, the government on the other side is a dominating stakeholder for Toyota as the company is bound to abide regulations and particular enforcement legislation implemented by the government. It is unfortunate a little that Toyota is currently facing issues for producing vehicles which have high MPG. As a dire consequence, the enterprise is continuously lobbying with the present Congress and Toyota now is attempting hard to get back customer trust which they have supposedly lost due to having lobbying issues (Choi & Chung, 2012). Furthermore, Toyota considers social media as valuable external stakeholders as they provide latest and reliable information about the cars. However, both local and international NGOs and SRI (Sustainable Responsible Investment) are potential stakeholders for Toyota Motors as the company relies upon their positive rating regarding the resistance power of the manufactured cars.

External stakeholders of Toyota

The plan

Before making a firm communication plan, it is essential to find out appropriate target market for the upcoming product (Coombs, 2014). Toyota Motor’s new crossover vehicle C-HR has been decided to make an arrival in early 2017. The car has been designed to lure the elite section of the society and distinctly those who possess an immense passion for the car. The sole purpose of Toyota Motors is to attract consumers by providing a satisfying experience of ownership. Additionally, they maintain the objective to dominate the market with the maximum supply of car.

As opined by Mishra, Boynton & Mishra (2014), a communication plan should accompany the core objectives of a company. C-HR is designed as a full sized sports utility vehicle (SUV) which is being considered to give a proper shape to the future of the sport or suburban utility vehicle. Fortunately, with the launch of C-HR, the company will find opportunities for sponsoring car racing events successfully.

Considering all these aspects a relevant communication plan for the company will be to communicate through advertising, organizing public events and conducting personal selling for the external stakeholders. In the case of an advertisement, the company should consider online social Medias like Facebook, Twitter, and Google plus for the purpose of promotion (Russell Neuman et al., 2014). On the other hand, through organizing public events, the company can increase public awareness regarding the importance of sustainability and the potentiality of the new brand in shaping opportunities for small SUVS (Berger & Iyengar, 2013).

However, the company should not forget about informing about the entire communication plan to the existing employees with the help of e-mails and notice board. The communication plan should be sent to the departments of sales and marketing and finance initially and in this case the responsible persons will be the individual team leaders and field managers of the enterprise (Eyre, 2016).

Figure 1: Information plan for the stakeholders

(Source: As created by the author)

The purpose and objective of the communication plan for the external stakeholders will be therefore to invite customers between the age of 18 to 35 who prefers to a cost-efficient vehicle with reliable durability, safety, and superior quality. Alongside, the communication plan has possible chances to increase the brand image of Toyota Motors in countries like Australia and the USA. Most importantly, if the communication runs smooth on the internet and supposed public events will turn successful, then it can be expected that the growth of the confidence level of the customers and market share will maximize. If the plan runs successfully, then it would probably increase the level of trust of the customers those wishes to make a career in the sport of car racing. The plan has the potentiality to broaden the scope of the company in case of sponsoring car racing competitions.

Scopes and aims of the communication plan

With the help of the program, Toyota can successfully gain individual opinions from the internal stakeholders, and it will contribute to assessing possible risk regarding the launch.

Communication channels for promotion are required to build an efficient and strong relationship with the target market and other external stakeholders for a company (DeFleur & DeFleur, 2016). As per the designed communication plan, most of Toyota Motors’ communication relies upon the informal communication style as most of the promotional activities will supposedly be conducted through online social media. However, the communication plan includes promotion through organizing multiple public events; therefore there are chances for formal communication with the audiences.

Toyota motors prefer to maintain their formal communication with their employee through newsletters, notice board, memoranda and business plans. Even the proposed communication plan itself will work as a channel of official communication for the company.  With the help of these official communication channels, the company has successfully established an effective communication process in which employees of the company share their opinions and information. The ability of Toyota motors in case of competing with rival organizations like Honda and Kia relies on the communication skills of their employees, though newsletter; memorandums and notice board are not enough for acquiring individual opinions from the existing workers.

The practice of sharing information through these channels matches with the top down communication pattern. On the side of advantage where this kind of communication enables an equal flow of information, such communication process increases the risk of losing critical details or any relevant information about a project on the side of disadvantage (Eisenberg, E. M., Goodall Jr & Trethewey, 2013).

It would help if Toyota will increase the number of review meetings with the existing workers and give importance to the scheduled conversations.

However, both international and domestic event management organizations like Event Planet and automobile dealers will work as the formal channels for Toyota motors for the promotional activities in case of launching the new car (Martin & Nakayama, 2013). Alongside, Toyota considers sending e-mails to their core customers at the time of launching any new car in the market. Sending electronic mails to the individual core customers is beneficial as this process enables a firm and loyal relationship with the target audience. On the other hand, communication through public events provides the opportunities for face to face interaction with the audience (Schultz, Castelló & Morsing, 2013). However, in the case of informing or alluring customers through public events is not worth equivalent to the process of sending e-mails to the core ones. Hence, the disadvantage of using e-mails through this process is the company can only convince conveniently to a certain number of people and not every individual (McCombs, 2013).

The plan

Toyota uses newsletters, e-mails, notice board, text messages and memos in forms of informal communication with its employees. If the company uses online social Medias like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube as the informal channels of communication, then it will work in favor for the company. In the current scenario, online social Medias and websites are viewed by a maximum number of audience and specifically sports lovers prefer to keep an eye on the online video channels like YouTube and news channels to get current updates about any news of car launch (Johnson, 2013). Informal channels like online social media and news channels will give the advantage to earn the attention of the international audience which will raise the revenue margin and help to gain international sponsorship for car racing.   

However, on the contrary, informal communication channels may not prove successful for those people who are not frequent with the online social Medias. Therefore, instead of communicating through these channels, Toyota should give equal importance in promoting through local and international newspapers. Nonetheless, as opined by Adams, Harf & Ford (2014), the theory of setting agenda is the process of covering particular news accurately and frequently to enhance its volume of importance. Toyota should keep in mind that the theory of Agenda setting will help to increase the level of importance regarding the new launch in the minds of the audience.

Nevertheless, for the employees and other internal stakeholders, Toyota prefers to have communication through emails and telephonic conversation in the form of informal communication. Telephonic conversations and text messages help internal stakeholders to express and share the individual point of views with the management (Jindal, Laveena & Aggarwal, 2015).

According to the action schedule of the communication plan, the company will spend a pretty amount of budget for broadcasting over the internet, social media channels and newspaper to have firm communication with the external stakeholders. The communication plan has strongly considered the theory of Agenda-setting, following which the action plan of the communication schedule involves a thorough repetition of the entire advertisement program for near about two months. The plan seems more to focus on making close communication with the external stakeholders and little less upon the internal ones. However, there should a planned schedule through which it would be easy to understand whether the plan has succeeded or not.

Table 2: Survey plan

(Source: As created by the author)

Information

Conclusion

From the above-considered report, it can be deduced that the communication plan for the launch of C-HR of Toyota has been prepared considering the necessity to share relevant information for both the internal and external stakeholders. The assignment indicates that formal channels of communication as well as informal channels of communication are required for the considered purpose. As per the proposed communication plan, employees and business partners are the prime internal stakeholders for Toyota for whom the company should make use of communication channels like e-mails, newsletters, phone calls and schedule meetings. On the other side, for chief external stakeholders like customers, media, government and local communities, Toyota should mainly depend upon online and offline social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, news and TV channels. Additionally public events, the press release will help actively in making a convenient communication bond.

References

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