Analyzing Honda's Global Business Strategies and Practices - MGMT 101

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Honda's global business strategies, focusing on its operations in New Zealand and India. The assignment begins by examining cultural dimensions using Hofstede's framework, comparing business practices in both countries, and assessing Honda's hierarchical structure and cultural adaptability. It then delves into Honda's international market strategies, differentiating between standardized and adaptable approaches. The report also evaluates various strategies for international expansion, suggesting a product standardization and communication adaptation strategy for Honda. Additionally, the report analyzes Honda's social media presence on Facebook in New Zealand using the 6C model, evaluating content, community engagement, customer interaction, and control mechanisms. Finally, it assesses Honda's Facebook page against a framework for effective social media presence, providing recommendations for improvement. The report concludes with a detailed evaluation of Honda's marketing approach and its alignment with its global objectives.

Running head: MANAGEMENT ASSIGNMENT
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Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Answer to Question 1......................................................................................................................2
Answer to Question 2......................................................................................................................4
Answer to Question 3......................................................................................................................4
Answer to Question 4(Part A).........................................................................................................5
Answer to Question 4 (Part B).........................................................................................................8
Answer to Question 4 (Part C).........................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................10

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Answer to Question 1
Every country has its own set of culture and other related practices which thereby assist
the different companies trading globally to understand the manner in which the companies
operate and how he decisions are made (Favaretto, Dihl, Barreto & Musse, 2016). An easy way
of understanding the culture is by examining the Hofstede`s cultural dimensions. The following
answer will be comparing the business practices of New Zealand and India in order to
understand the operations of Honda in these countries.
Power Distance
The Power distance measures the extent to which the less powerful individuals in the
society accept that the power is unequally distributed and whether they successfully accept this
fact or not. India scores has a high score in this dimension and this indicates that hierarchy is
appreciated in the country and that the unequal rights between the different people is highly
accepted (Rallapalli & Montgomery, 2015). With a score of 22 New Zealand likes the power to
be distributed equally. The business managers are easily available at they work as team. At
Honda, the culture of the firm is hierarchical in nature and the power is divided between these
different levels.
Figure 1: The Hofstede comparison between India and New Zealand
(Source: Hofstede, 2017).

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Individualism
The individualism aspect measures the degree to which there exists interdependence
between its members. The society of New Zealand scores considerably high in this aspect
whereby with a score of 79 the people in the society look out for themselves and their immediate
families. On the other hand, in India, The score is intermediate whereby the people like to belong
to a large family but care for their immediate ones. The culture of Honda can be stated to be
rather collectivist in nature whereby the organizational members care about one another.
Masculinity
A masculine society is more inclined towards competition, achievement and success
whereby a feministic society is inclined towards caring for others and leaving a good quality life.
In India the culture is inclined more towards success and competition thereby making it a
masculine society (Saleem & Larimo, 2017). On the other hand, even New Zealand with a score
of 58 has a similar culture whereby people strive to be as good as possible and like to lead a
competitive life. Even at Honda, the culture is quite competitive.
Uncertainty Avoidance
This dynamic measures the extent to which the different members of the society feel
threatened by the ambiguous. With a score of 49 in this dimension, New Zealand does not reflect
a preference with respect to this risk factor (Hofstede, 2017). India scores a 40 and thereby
reflects that there exists an acceptance for imperfection and the people do not feel compelled to
take initiatives with respect to action and feel that nothing is impossible. Hence, when there
exists a problem in Honda, the management combats against the problem.
Long term Orientation
This dimension describes the manner in which the society maintains a link with the past
while dealing with the future of the organization. India has a score of 51 in this aspect and for
this reason, Karma prevails in this reason and there is an acceptance in the society is prevalent.
Whereas the culture of New Zealand is quite normative in nature whereby and have a strong

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concern bout establishing the truth. In Honda, past poor decisions as well as data are taken into
consideration with respect to future concerns.
Indulgence
Indulgence dimension measures the extent to which the people in the society try to
control their feelings and desires. New Zealand with a score of 75 can be stated to be a culture of
indulgence. The people in the society like to enjoy their life and are optimists. However, India
has a poor score in the dimension which reflects that the people believe to be in a state of
restraint. At Honda, there exists a strong work life balance whereby the family needs to be
looked after along with office work (Honda.co.nz , 2018).
Answer to Question 2
When an organization conducts business operations in the external global environment is
becomes necessary for them to follow a suitable strategy for expansion whereby the firm is able
to attract the target audience and at the same time manage its brand image. After the annual
reports of Honda have been analyzed, it can be stated that the firm generally follows a
standardized strategy whereby the quality of its products which are cars and two wheelers are not
compromised with. However, with respect to countries like India, Honda often adapts an
adaptable strategy whereby its products are designed as per the climate of the country and the
kind of social factors which India is more inclined to (Global. Honda, 2018). For instance, India
is a country of values and the different members of the family believe in staying together. Hence,
for this reason, the different cars and other products designed are done so after keeping in mind
this factor. According to Marshall (2014), the customization of the products as per the country
can be considered to be a good strategy based on which any firm can achieve success. For this
reason, it can be stated that Honda adopts a compatible as well as a standardized strategy.
Answer to Question 3
In case a company plans to expand in another country, it becomes relatively important for
them to decide upon a fix strategy which will be followed. This strategy needs to be appropriate
in terms of both communication as well as the product. The different strategies which Honda can
adopt is defined as follows:

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 Product and Communications extension (Dual extension): This strategy is an extreme one
whereby Honda will be choosing a market with a new product and communication plan.
In this manner, they will be taking a huge risk for the welfare of the firm. The early
market entrants can make use of this strategy (Olson, Slater, Hult & Olson, 2018).
 Product Extension – Communications Adaptation: This strategy is adopted whereby all
the products to be launched are similar to the standard product of the company but the
communication strategy is made adaptable to the country in order to build the trust. Levis
makes a popular use of this kind of a strategy (Mazanec, Crotts, Gursoy & Lu, 2015).
 Product Adaptation – Communications Extension: In this strategy, the Product is
customized according to the needs of the target market and it is seen to it that the
communication strategy which is adopted is standardized. In this regard, the British
Petroleum uses a standardized communications strategy but provides its product as per
the country requirement.
 Product and Communications Adaptation - Dual Adaptation: In the dual adaption
strategy, both the product as well as the communications strategy is designed as per the
company`s requirement in a new country (Perrin, 2015). Through this the company is
able to ensure it has a profound impact on the customers. For instance, Olay makes use of
this kind of strategy in different countries.
 Product Invention: The last strategy which a firm can make use of is the product
invention whereby a new product line is created for a single country. The PepsiCo Lays
Company follows this strategy to ensure high sales.
Suggested strategy for Honda:
After analyzing the above strategy based on the five different international strategies, it is
suggested that Honda should make use of a Product Standardization and Communication
Adaptation strategy which will help it to save costs and ensure that the standardized products
become globally very popular (Weinstein & Pohlman, 2015).
Answer to Question 4(Part A)
The Social Media 6C model helps n the analysis of the social media page of any company
with the help of six different dimensions to analyze whether a particular page is performing well

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and achieving its objectives or not (Lacoste, 2016). The given section will be analyzing Honda`s
social media page on Facebook in New Zealand and examine whether it comprises of the
different successful aspects of the dimension or not.
Company:
The name of the company is Honda but in the social media the name of the page is Blue
Wing Honda. The name on the social media is a bit distinctive from its name but it helps in the
management of the brand (Facebook.com., 2018). The page has a following of 34000 on the
social media and although New Zealand is a particularly small country, the numbers are quite
low. The page concentrates on the Blue Wing bike of the company. It needs to take adequate
measures in order to ensure that the number of followers of the company increase.
Content:
According to Stuff.co.nz (2018), it is very crucial that a company posts attractive content
on its social media page which will make the followers interested. The page provides details on
the products of the company, community stories, and success stories and also provides the
different followers an opportunity to share the details of their rides with the firm. It is
recommended that the firm posts better content and improves its followings.
Figure 2: The 6C Model of Social Media
(Source: Gerbaudo, 2018).

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Community:
The community are taken to be the followers of the particular page on social media. As
stated earlier, the brand has a small following of around 34000 on the facebook page and as
compared to the limited content, the company posts information which is reasonable and tends to
work in the favor of the firm (Gerbaudo, 2018). The community comprises of sellers, customers
and other partners. It is recommended that the firm takes measures to increase the size of the
community.
Customers:
The customers in this model can be described as those member, who consume and make
use of these bikes sold by Honda in New Zealand. Out of the 34000 followers, a large number of
them are the customers (Honda.co.nz, 2018). A constant communication needs to be maintained
with them in order to ensure, that the number of customers increase and that the revenues of the
firm also improve.
Conversations:
Conversations can be defined as the communication which exists between the
administrators of the page and the followers of the page. It helps to maintain a link between these
two parties and makes the customers feel valued at large. Honda needs to ensure that the
conversation between them and the customer increases and that they find a source to post
interesting content which will then ultimately make the customers interested (Facebook.com.,
2018).
Control:
The control can be rightfully defined as the measure or the monitoring which takes place
on the performance of the social media page. For Honda, it is important that they keep a check
on their content which is posted and the response received so that adequate measures can be
adopted.

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Answer to Question 4 (Part B)
Social media
site- Facebook
New Zealand India
Site details Yes No yes No
Clearly
identifies the
purpose of the
site
 
Has titles,
descriptions
and visuals that
resonate with
the audience
 
Answers users’
questions
effectively
 
Encourages
audience
engagement
 
Makes it easy to
share, befriend
and connect
 
Has a sense of
community
 
After analyzing the page of Honda in New Zealand and analyzing it based on the
framework of Fraser and Dutta, the page of Honda in New Zealand needs to ensure that it takes
considerable steps in order to engage a larger audience and that it builds a large community of
members thereby solving the resolves of the customers as well as posting interesting videos
(Facebook.com. , 2018). In the home page, India, the marketing team has been doing a good job

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and keeps a regular post of good contents and replies adequately to the responses and hence, the
New Zealand department needs to make adequate changes with respect to the same.
Answer to Question 4 (Part C)
It is important that whenever a page uses a social medal medium to promote its products
or services especially in a foreign country, it uses key measurement tools which will help in
evaluating the performance of the page. For Honda, the tool of Effective Reach can be used. This
is because, it was observed in the analysis done earlier, that Honda has a poor following on its
page and that although it agreed that it posts adequate content, due to the poor reach, it is unable
to find adequate success (Honda.co.nz, 2018). Hence, the effective reach can act as a good
communication metrics.
The effective reach measures the usefulness of an advertisement or the social media page
by tracking the percentage of potential audience that will view the page or the advertisement and
how the advertisement is perceived along with the number of times it is viewed. The quality of
the exposure of the advertisement or the page can be measured with this tool. It should be the
aim of Honda to attain a good `effective reach`

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References
Facebook.com. (2018). Blue Wing Honda [online]. Available at:
https://www.facebook.com/nokia/ (Retrieved on: 01. November 2018).
Favaretto, R. M., Dihl, L., Barreto, R., & Musse, S. R. (2016, September). Using group
behaviors to detect hofstede cultural dimensions. In Image Processing (ICIP), 2016 IEEE
International Conference on (pp. 2936-2940). IEEE.
Gerbaudo, P. (2018). Tweets and the streets: Social media and contemporary activism. Pluto
Press
Global. Honda (2018). Investor Relations [online]. Available at:
https://global.honda/investors/library/annual_report.html (Retrieved on: 01. November
2018).
Hofstede, G. (2017). Cultural Dimensions-Country Comparison. [online]. Available at:
https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison/ (Retrieved on: 01. November
2018).
Honda.co.nz (2018). Award winning new cars, SUVs & Value [online]. Available at:
https://www.honda.co.nz/ (Retrieved on: 01. November 2018).
Honda.co.nz (2018). News [online]. Available at: https://www.honda.co.nz/news/reviews (
Retrieved on: 01. November 2018).
Lacoste, S. (2016). Perspectives on social media ant its use by key account managers. Industrial
Marketing Management, 54, 33-43.
Marshall, G. (2014). Marketing management. McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Pearson
Mazanec, J. A., Crotts, J. C., Gursoy, D., & Lu, L. (2015). Homogeneity versus heterogeneity of
cultural values: An item-response theoretical approach applying Hofstede's cultural
dimensions in a single nation. Tourism Management, 48, 299-304.

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Olson, E. M., Slater, S. F., Hult, G. T. M., & Olson, K. M. (2018). The application of human
resource management policies within the marketing organization: The impact on business
and marketing strategy implementation. Industrial Marketing Management, 69, 62-73.
Perrin, A. (2015). Social media usage. Pew research center, 52-68.
Rallapalli, K. C., & Montgomery, C. D. (2015). Marketing strategies for Asian-Americans:
guidelines based on Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions. In Minority marketing: Research
perspectives for the 1990s (pp. 73-77). Springer, Cham.
Saleem, S., & Larimo, J. (2017). Hofstede cultural framework and advertising research: An
assessment of the literature. In Advances in Advertising Research (Vol. VII) (pp. 247-
263). Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden.
Stuff.co.nz (2018). New Zealand Global Growth [online]. Available at:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/news/98352608/new-zealand-set-to-be-part-of-global-
growth-in-supply-of-honda-hybrid-cars (Retrieved on: 01. November 2018).
Weinstein, A., & Pohlman, R. A. (2015). Customer value: a new paradigm for marketing
management. In Proceedings of the 1997 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual
Conference (pp. 132-133). Springer, Cham.