ABSTRACT
For example, in the late 1960s and early 1970s Japanese products sold in the United States were considered junk. ese products had inferior performance and quality. us, in the automotive industry, especially for Toyota, Japan needed to focus on performance and quality, especially the latter. is does not mean that development and design schedule and cost were not important, but they were less important than performance and quality. e only way for their products to be recognized as a good value in the U.S. marketplace was for them to improve their performance and
quality. History tells us that Toyota was successful in achieving a radical improvement in performance and quality. Performance and quality were maintained as Toyota’s main focus until the year 2000, when it switched and made a major attack on product costs. us, cost became its number one focus. At the same time that Toyota switched from performance/quality to cost, Hyundai/Kia entered the U.S. marketplace with a vengeance. While cost-competitive, its vehicles were known to have inferior quality. It was then that Hyundai/Kia began its major marketing scheme of a 100,000-mile warranty and switched its emphasis from cost to performance and quality. So the lesson here is even in the same marketplace at the same time, di¢erent companies can have a di¢erent focus. at focus then depends on that company’s products and the customer’s opinion of those products.
