BU201
Final Draft
Case Study The company I chose is Ford Motor Company. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In 2007, Ford is currently the second largest automaker in the U.S. and the fourth-largest in the world based on number of vehicles sold annually. As a commercial organization, Ford’s goal is earning profit. Ford are producing and selling more than 30 types of cars that including trucks, cars, SUVs and it had become the largest producer. Ford is not only strong in America, but also in all over the world. Since 1979, Ford had bought Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo brands. Besides, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK. Ford is an advanced company. In 1908, the Ford Model T began to be produced and sold by Ford Motor Company. The Model T set 1908 as the historic year that the automobile became popular. It is generally regarded as the first affordable automobile. So Ford has a large contribution in the vehicle popularization. In addition, Ford invented the first “work line” in 1913 so the speed of producing had increased. However, the “work line” was not very successful in that time, because the rate of fault was high. In 1914, Ford solved that problem by increasing salary and decreasing the working hour to 8 hours. We can see that in the beginning of 20th century, Ford took advanced and initiative action in producing. So it got a large market share in that time. There is no doubt that the efficiency of producing in Ford was high so the price of the Ford cars in low. However, since 1919, the Upscale Market was growing up. So the requirement of cars would be higher and the Customers preferred to buy luxurious cars. In that time GMC and Chrysler pushed their upscale cars into market, in addition GMC focused on not only upscale market but also low-price cars. So GMC got a large market share in that time and Ford gradually lost its market share because of its single