Honda Motors S.W.O.T Strengths • The worlds leader motorcycles and the sixth world best automobile manufacturer as well as remarkable brand image. • Assembly plants are scattered worldwide to case customer for obtaining the products that they desire. • Variety of products manufactured to meet the target market demands. • Environmental and safety concern by making hybrid and fuel cell automobile, Weaknesses • Unable to be the market leader for a certain product such as cars in the States. • Less advertisement and promotion strategies. • Postpones the operation plants in some countries due to capitalism caused. Opportunities • Able to assure its firm of gaining trust from potential customers through sponsorships for some either local or International events. • Assembly plants that are located worldwide enable customers more easily and satisfy their desires. • Able to ensure customers that the products are economic and safety reliable • Easy to win the market competition from competitors where they dont produce automobile. Threats • New government set new policies for importing automobile parts of motorcycles. • Economic situation. • Competitor can win the market first knowing from our lack of impressive advertisement in the developing countries. • Similar products designs might be copied competitors perform mass production to gain the profit at the first time. Yamaha Motor SWOT Strengths • Yamaha is applying the combination metal for piano in motorcycle. The aim is to make it lightweight and sturdy. • Yamaha stay focus on motorcycle manufacturing and domestically production, but also expand it to the other countries. • Using Moto GP champions to entertain their fans and great moment for promotion and publicity. Weaknesses • A little left behind than our company when promoted its product for the first time the product has established. • Its first image was a heavy weight and high emission product, unlike Honda that has changed from the 2 strokes to 4 strokes. • Some products “Motorcycles” are not very economic in comparison to Honda. Experience yourself with Yamaha MIO, though its light but its not cost effective in customers insights. Opportunity • Yamaha offers the lower price of product than another competitors. • If Yamaha keep struggling in RD, to meet customer satisfaction, it might be a chance for Yamaha to be the on of the leaders in the motorcycles industry. Threats • Yamahas resale value is lower than Honda. • If the Moto GP champions did not win the competition will affect their sales performance and it becomes an opportunity for market competition. • If the mindset of the target market changes to the environmental concern that will be more likely directing customers to switch their preference to Honda or other competitors. Understanding competitors swots and our own swot enable us to set up new marketing strategies plan and further implement them in market. Strategics are not planned to focusing on one object if one plan does not work, we have to adjust and use another plan to gain the market share. It seems that Yamaha and other organisations are also manufacturing the products that we have been producing ever since. Nevertheless, it would not affect our sales as customers will see what we have offered in the market ever since. These positioning show us clearly that each organisation have their own SWOTs that impress their consumer and customers. In such case, Honda Motor simply keeps the high standard performance and the research and development support the company to invent new innovations that are actually for customer satisfaction. As we all can see from the positioning have exhibited clearly that the closest rival for overall industrial is Yamaha for the motorbike and Toyota for Automobile. It is obviously true that nowadays customers consider about our performance which bring and develop new technology that concern with environments. Hybrid, economic vehicles, fuel cell are just sample for a few number of products that are likely to be the new trend and lifestyle in the near future. What makes us different from the other competitors are that we have wide products to offer at all levels. Regardless of Yamaha Motor that claims that his company has made such a high profit through selling motorcycles and other products in Indonesia. But reluctantly, Yamaha admits that Honda Motor has obtained high margins from loyal customers. Marketing Mix The controllable variables that Honda Motor puts together in order to satisfy the target group. Reluctantly, the marketing mix consist of some products that are offered at certain price with some promotion to tell potential customers about its products and a place where customers can reach the intended products. Product To attract customers, we have considered about variables that interest customers to buy products that we have offered, it may involve either a physical good or service because product is not limited to physical goods only as the objective of Honda Motor is to satisfy customers needs. For instance, Honda released a new general motorbike that can be driven for all levels. In this case. customers are not really looking at only the design of physical products, but also what variables are included when they want to buy the product. Such as quality, features, manual installation instruction, and the benefits are the elements to be considered by potential customers because they will not buy a product from Honda Motor if it does not have good quality, features that customers expect, manual installationinstruction that ease users and the benefits from buying Honda Motor. Every product that we produce has always a brand that reflects our image. As Honda understood about the characteristics of its target market, we use sort of brand which is easy to be recognised by our target market. It has to be also familiar to customers so that they will remember it because customers view a brand as a guarantee of quality. One thing thats very funny when a number of consumers were questioned about Honda Motor products through survey said that by having Honda Motors products will help them become a very economic person and they wont change to another product. So in this case, our company has built such a brand insistence to customers. Although we have created such a great brand name that customers hardly forget it, we are as marketing manager must also consider a step a head. The Products life cycles which describes the stages a really new product idea goes through beginning to end. Customer will think of how long does the product they buy will be longlasting.? What about if our competitor Yamaha introduce their new product to a market with more competitive variables given ? Indeed, we all realised that Yamaha has probably better offer but customers will not just rely on their new product because customers have been very familiar with Hondas product. Honda sales profit can be grow fast but sometimes profits go down but then rise again since Honda makes some innovations. Nevertheless, we have to be aware as competitors see the chance and probably enter the market as they will copy what products sold most or even worst when they try to improve it so that they can compete better with our company. When these competitors move aggressively to obtain more profits, it will be more likely a nightmare for us as our sales will possibly continue down due to market maturity. It will lead to sales decline where new products from our competitors are entering the market to replace their old products and then the price competition will occur, however, it is not such a big deal since Honda has a very strong brand that will gain better profits than competitors as customers are able to differentiate what products that suit them. Place As Marketing managers, we must define a strategic plan to decide for the location where customers can get either goods or services in the right quantities and the right place. Selecting strategic locations are definitely required because we need to serve different target markets that have unique characteristics. The objective of selecting such a strategic place is to reach our customers needs. As we know that every city in Indonesia for example has Honda Motor service centre and this kind of strategy is a public secret that Yamaha also builds their service centre to reach their customers. In a such case, we have to involve our customer services staff to assist customers professionally so that we will win the competition. Honda Motor has no major problem finding a place in Indonesia or Asia in general because we have been working with our subsidiaries as well as affiliates to be one of our distribution channel where the main objective is to provide goods and services to the customers. To set up such a distribution channel, we have subsidiaries and affiliated in some countries. Honda Motor has scattered plants worldwide and its best practice to work with the retailers or the authorised dealers and for this reason Indonesia appointed AHM to be a partner. Promotion Its a sort of way to communicate information between our company and potential customers. Before hand, we understood that segmentation and positioning are obviously factors that can lead us to conduct such promotions. The great promotion part of the marketing mix is telling the target customers that the right products are available at the right place and at the right price. Honda Motor has broad products that we must find the strategic tools to promote, this will of course involve some typical of promotion such as personal selling, mass selling and sales promotion itself. These type of promotion have different strengths and limitation but it will help us develop the best promotion blend. Selling Promotion will be conducted by sales executive for a product like cars, motorbikes, however, this way will consume lots of money, efforts but consider effective because our sales executive can obtain direct feedback and mass selling is meant to target market as a whole. It can be done through advertising and publicity so that potential customers can see and understand about our physical products as well as the characteristics. Sales promotion is activity that is considered more than advertising, publicity and personal selling. Its because in sales promotion will interest them and we can encourage our potential customers to try and purchase our products eventually. Price Marketing Managers should also consider the unit cost of production, distribution channels, and other elements before determining the prices. Regardless of the calculation as we assumed it has been done and today we can see what customers can benefit from paying the products.