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Honda in Japan

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Submitted By rkhaitan
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Describe Honda’s strategy in the Japanese market from its founding until 1959. Describe Honda’s strategy in the US market starting with its entry to the market in 1959.

After world war 2, the motorcycle industry in japan was delivering technically inferior products that were unreliable and were not addressing the consumer needs. Honda’s strategy was to supply technically superior products that provided cheap means of transportation. while the competition was risk averse, Honda’s focused on innovation to achieve technical superiority and use price as a competitive edge. This allowed them to not only provide a better product in the current market segment but also enabled them to identify and capture new market segments. Their focus on innovation and utilization of economies of scales allowed them to attain a sustainable growth and realize significant market share.

Huge volumes gave them a competitive cost position and they were able to leverage this position to enter the US market with a differentiated product i.e. light weight motorcycles.

They leveraged the scale economies to establish a competitive edge in distribution, technology and advertising. To gain a large market share

Why was Honda successful in Japan? Why was Honda successful in the US? Were there any differences in the factors which made Honda successful in these two markets?

- bold move to depart from the risk averse strategy of investing in one winning design
- invested in innovation and identified and targeted untapped market segments
- achieved economies of scale / volumes to get a cost advantage

- Image makeover of motorcycles
- lower cost motorcycles
- aggressive emphasis on market share
- large scale production gave a competitive cost position
- leveraged this advantage to create an efficient distribution channel and spent heavily on advertising and promotion

The factors

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