A comparative study of strategic management utilized by European and Japanese car dealerships in Thailand

Abstract

The objectives of qualitative study are: 1) to study strategic management in any levels affecting to the performance of car dealerships; 2) to compare strategic management utilization between European and Japanese car dealerships; and 3) to arrange the most frequent strategic utilized by European and Japanese car dealerships in Thailand. Population and samplings were divided into two groups: management officers in European car dealerships and Japanese car dealerships. Both groups need to occupy their positions at least three years of experience in car dealership. There were 100 samplings (70 from Japanese car dealers and 30 from European car dealers) from 50 car dealer companies selected by purposive sampling method. They were interviewed with semi-structured questionnaire consisting of personal information and content questionnaire. Then, the interview conversation had been recorded and transcribed word by word in order to analyze the information given. It is found that both car dealers had applied different corporate level strategic management affecting their sales performance. European car dealers had frequently utilized stability strategy (70%) whereas Japanese car dealers had frequently utilized growth strategy (75%). In terms of business level strategy, differentiation strategy had been mostly applied by European car dealers (50%) while cost leadership strategy had been mostly applied by Japanese car dealers (78.33%). Regarding to functional strategy, most frequently used strategy to excel their sales revenue was marketing strategy used by European car dealers (87.5%) and Japanese car dealers (66.67%).