Report on Toyota: Brand Management, Values, and Strategies

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Toyota's brand management. It begins with an introduction and a brief description of the company, including its global presence and product offerings. The report then delves into Toyota's brand hierarchy, outlining the structure and organization of its brand elements. It explores the various values associated with Toyota products, including functional, emotional, social, and self-expressive values, providing detailed descriptions of how these values are implemented. The report further discusses appropriate marketing strategies for Toyota products, such as branding, pricing, and brand extension strategies. It also examines the effectiveness of different promotional tools, including advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing, in enhancing brand elements. The conclusion summarizes the key findings and emphasizes the importance of brand management for Toyota's continued success. References are provided at the end of the report.

Running Head: Brand Management 1
Brand Management

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Description of the company’s detail................................................................................................4
The brand hierarchy of Toyota........................................................................................................5
Values of the products.....................................................................................................................6
Functional value...........................................................................................................................6
Emotional value...........................................................................................................................6
Social value..................................................................................................................................6
Self-expressive value...................................................................................................................6
Values are associated with Toyota..................................................................................................6
Functional values with Toyota.....................................................................................................6
Social values with Toyota............................................................................................................7
Emotional values with Toyota.....................................................................................................7
Self-expressive values with Toyota.............................................................................................7
Appropriate strategies for a product................................................................................................8
How the brand elements can be effective with the help of promotional tools................................8
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................11
References......................................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
Brand management is the planning that defines how brand will recognize in the market to
achieve the targeted goals (Qian, 2014). This report will emphasize the brief description of
Toyota Automobiles Company and its brand hierarchy. The values of the product are important
for the company as it helps to enhance the brand image of the company. The appropriate
strategies will be identified to for a product and the importance of brand elements will be
described with the help of promotional tools.

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Description of the company’s detail
Toyota Motor Corporation is a Japanese Multinational automotive manufacturer company that
headquarter is in Toyota, Aichi, Japan. It is the leader of selling number of hybrid electric
vehicles, and one of the largest company that motivate the mass-market adoption of hybrid
vehicles all over the world. It has more than 360,000 employees worldwide and it was the 5th
largest company in the world by revenue (Chiarini & Vagnoni, 2015). The brand quality of the
products of Toyota is superior. The market position of the company is strong in different
geographic across the world. There are various products offered by Company such as Cars and
minivans, Hybrids &RV, Crossovers &SUVs and trucks (Coyle, 2013). It is providing various
factors to the customer for buying a new car such as quality, safety, performance, values, fuel
economy, technology and design.

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The brand hierarchy of Toyota
A brand hierarchy summarizes the branding strategy by showing the figure and nature of
common and characteristics brand elements across the company’s products, enlightening the
precise ordering of brand elements (Chart, Industry & Industry, 2010). The brand hierarchy of
Toyota is given below:C E
CESSL ELEC am r
yCamryS ESEL ELEX LEXLEA va l
o nAvalonX LXLX LSXLSC el ic
aCelicaS ESES LESLEE CH
OECHOM at ri
xMatrixP riu
sPriusL ex u
sLexus

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Values of the products
Functional value
Functional value is based on the product characteristics that offer the consumers with functional
utility. It has huge functional benefits that have the effective impact with consumers and sustain
the firm position of the products relative to competitors.
Emotional value
Emotional value provides the positive feeling to the customer at the time of purchasing product
of particular brand. It helps to adjoin depth and richness to the experience of using the brand. It
enhances the emotional benefits and includes the feel-good factor (Durrani, Ravnløkke &
Niinimäki, 2016).
Social value
Social value denotes the high importance of something or action that increase the value of the
products. It refers to broader financial and non-financial impacts of organization, programmes
and involvement which include the welfare of the communities and the environment (Thakor and
Katsanis, 2011).
Self-expressive value
It is effective value that provides the opportunity to someone to express him self-image to others.
It helps to increase the connection between the customer and brand by considering on something
that is connected to his or her personality.

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Values are associated with Toyota
Toyota has the values of products and it is very successful due to its superior quality in the
products. The functional, self-expression, social and emotional values are associated with Toyota
in an effective manner. The descriptions of these values with Toyota are defined below:
Functional values with Toyota
The functional values are higher in Toyota Company as PD and PE engineers work together to
improve geometry and enlarge Laser Screw Welding (LSW) technology. It helps to take less
time of conventional spot welding and less space of the floor to provide the effective body of the
cars (Morgan, 2016). Toyota Company does not compromise with quality and nothing less
would have been acceptable. Another priority regarding product of Toyota is to decrease weight
to enhance fuel efficiency.
Social values with Toyota
The social value of Toyota is effective as it contributes in its founding principles. It has been
taken various actions in various fields such as society and culture, education, environment and
traffic safety to enrich the lives of the communities. Toyota has great contribution in activities to
protect the environment such as forestry activities to make the sustainable society, Global
Environmental Protection and Preservation and many more. The involvements of Toyota in
various social activities help to enhance the value of the products in the view of customers.
Emotional values with Toyota
Toyota is using various strategies to promote its brand to the market. As a Brand Manager, it has
been found that Toyota use the Pinterest boards to put together motivational content which is an
effective approach in comparison of traditional print and media advertising. The brand of Toyota

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comes across as friendly and appealing to the emotional aspects of customers without being the
artificial.
Self-expressive values with Toyota
A self expressive benefit is linked with the personality of the customer permanently. The brand
personality of Toyota cars builds self-expressive advantages that the customer can utter his
personality by this brand. It is based as per the brand customer relationship and differentiation.

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Appropriate strategies for a product
There are various strategies for a product that would be helpful to handle within the brand
hierarchy. These strategies are branding strategy, pricing strategy, brand extension strategy and
Brand leveraging strategy. Branding strategy involves number of the levels of brand hierarchy. It
can be handled within the brand hierarchy by linking brand elements to multiple products. There
are different products of Toyota in Hierarchy that is why it is necessary to manufacture the cars
as per the affordability of the different people. Pricing strategy would be helpful to distinguish
the rates of the car as per the features. A brand leveraging strategy uses the power of existing
brand to increase the competition without producing new products, it interest into new market
(Kim & Hall, 2015). Brand extension strategy includes two kinds of strategies such as
centralized and decentralized. Centralized strategy refers the leverage of extension of the parent
position, reputation and brand name the revenues for a business. Decentralized brand extension
strategy defines the leverage’s extensions in manufacturing, delivery and economies of scale but
in this strategy, the parent name do not share in the new market (Delgado-Ballester & Fernandez
Sabiote, 2015). These strategies are useful for Toyota which helps to handle the brand hierarchy
of Toyota in an appropriate manner.
How the brand elements can be effective with the help of promotional tools
Toyota is famous for its trucks, cars and related to automobile product all over the world. The
logo of Toyota is having the simplicity with significant meaning. The logo of Toyota is
mentioned below:

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Figure 1: Logo of Toyota
Source: (Zhao, Ichise, Mita & Sasaki, 2014).
The role of Promotional Tools in brand elements
Promotional tools help to encourage the number of customers to switch the brand or trial a
product. The importance of promotional tool in brand element is huge as it helps to buyer
identify the need to make a purchase. Buyers of Toyota’s product can be able to evaluate
products after the purchase and compare advantages and features of competing products with the
help of promotional tools (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). There are some promotional tools
mentioned which can be effective for brand elements of Toyota.
Advertising: Advertising is an effective promotional tool that facilitates buyer to identify the
requirement of purchase to make a purchase. The brand elements of Toyota can be effective with
the help of advertising as it can approach number of customers at one time. Advertising can be
done via television, radio, and newspaper and posting banners.
Personal Selling: personal selling is the approach where Toyota hires the people to sell the
products after meeting face to face with the customers. It increases the high customer attention

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towards the product and opportunity to close the sale. The main advantage of this approach is
that it can maintain the customers’ loyalty.
Sales Promoting: it supports customer to trial a product or switch brands. It can use both media
and non-media marketing communication for increasing the demand of the customers. Buyers of
Toyota’s product can choose the product that are a good value and decided to buy them. It is the
best technique to communicate information to the customers about the product (Shamout, 2016).
Public Relations: it is an effective strategic communication process that help to create the
mutually relationship between organization and publics. There are public relations professional
in Toyota who contributes to make it success all over the world because the successful brand
always comes from customer with their support for the company brand (Ailawadi, Beauchamp,
Donthu, Gauri & Shankar, 2009).
Direct Marketing: direct marketing focuses limited resources on targeted promotion. It is an
effective promotional tool which helps to increase the revenues of Toyota Company by selling
number of products of it. Brand elements can be influenced due to this promotional tool because
it relatively easy to measure response and success (Ndubisi & Moi, 2013).

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Conclusion
It can be concluded that brand management is essential component for the growth of Toyota
Company. The brand hierarchy of Toyota has been elaborated in this report. The importance of
values of product is huge for Toyota Company as it has been discussed about functional,
emotional, social and self-expression value in the context of Toyota Company. Various
appropriate strategies have been discussed such as branding strategy, pricing strategy, brand
extension strategy and Brand leveraging strategy. The discussion has been made on promotional
tools which can be effective for the brand elements.

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References
Ailawadi, K. L., Beauchamp, J. P., Donthu, N., Gauri, D. K., & Shankar, V. (2009).
Communication and promotion decisions in retailing: a review and directions for future
research. Journal of retailing, 85(1), 42-55.
Chart, S., Industry, M., & Industry, S. (2010). Toyota Motor Corporation. Retrieved from:
http://www.toyota-global.com/company/vision_philosophy/.
Chiarini, A., & Vagnoni, E. (2015). World-class manufacturing by Fiat. Comparison with Toyota
production system from a strategic management, management accounting, operations
management and performance measurement dimension. International Journal of
Production Research, 53(2), 590-606.
Coyle, E ., (2013). Toyota’s New Mantra: Quality over Quantity, Retrieved from:
https://www.cheatsheet.com/stocks/toyotas-new-mantra-quality-over-quantity.html/?
a=viewall.
Delgado-Ballester, E., & Fernandez Sabiote, E. (2015). Brand experimental value versus brand
functional value: which matters more for the brand?. European Journal of
Marketing, 49(11/12), 1857-1879.
Durrani, M., Ravnløkke, L., & Niinimäki, K. (2016). Shared Emotional Values in Sustainable
Clothing Design Approaches. In Circular Transitions Conference, Chelsea College of
Arts & Tate Britain, London.

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Kim, H. S., & Hall, M. L. (2015). Green brand strategies in the fashion industry: Leveraging
connections of the consumer, brand, and environmental sustainability. In Sustainable
Fashion Supply Chain Management (pp. 31-45). Springer, Cham.
Mangold, W. G., & Faulds, D. J. (2009). Social media: The new hybrid element of the promotion
mix. Business horizons, 52(4), 357-365.
Morgan, J. (2016). Creating New Value at Toyota. Retrieved from:
http://advancedmanufacturing.org/creating-new-value-toyota/.
Ndubisi, N. O., & Moi, C. T. (2013). Customers behaviourial responses to sales promotion: the
role of fear of losing face. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics.
Qian, Y. (2014). Brand management and strategies against counterfeits. Journal of Economics &
Management Strategy, 23(2), 317-343.
Shamout, M. D. (2016). The impact of promotional tools on consumer buying behavior in retail
market. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 7(1), 75-85.
Thakor, M. V. and. Katsanis, L. P. (2011). A Model of Brand and Country Effects on Quality
Dimensions: Issues and Implications. Journal of International Consumer Marketing 9(3):
79-100.
Zhao, L., Ichise, R., Mita, S., & Sasaki, Y. (2014). An Ontology-Based Intelligent Speed
Adaptation System for Autonomous Cars. In JIST(pp. 397-413).

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