Toyota has revealed plans to restructure U.S. marketing operations beginning Monday. Toyota has revealed little and denied the Wall Street Journal’s petition for a comment, but the changes should include relocating a number of employees from the Los Angeles area, where Toyota has run most U.S. operations since 1956. Many employees will be given the opportunity for mobility within Toyota as a result of operations makeover. Toyota competitors, Nissan and Honda, have recently also relocated various high-level employees out of California, presumably due to high costs of living and high tax rates.
I would expect that Toyota’s attempted operations renovations will be beneficial to the company, but will also affect the California economy, as well as the economy of respective destinations of relocation. The influx of highly skilled workers to different local economies will effect labor markets.
Discussion Questions:
- How might said changes affect both U.S. auto firms, as well as Toyota’s Japanese competitors?
- Will Toyota look to set up new plants and operation locations besides their currently established locations?
Citation:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304163604579527920264761150?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304163604579527920264761150.html
Automotive News announced today that Toyota is set to relocate its North American HQ to Texas. As the California economy continues to sour and that of Texas is expected to grow 4.2% (Forbes) over the next five years, it seems to make perfect sense for Toyota to completely relocate from California following suite of Nissan and Honda.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/dalebuss/2014/04/27/it-makes-sense-for-toyota-to-leave-california-for-texas/
http://www.autonews.com/
I think the move will be very beneficial for Texas. After the oil boom in the 70’s and 80’s, the oil fields in Texas have been for the most part exhausted, this left a lot of poverty and unemployment throughout Texas. The moving of the Toyota HQ to Texas will have a similar effect to Nike establishing a factory in an impoverished country. The move will definitely create a lot of new jobs; however, I also think it will create other businesses around the Toyota HQ due to the population increase that will follow the movement of the HQ. It will be interesting to see how substantial of an impact Toyota has on the local economy where it’s established as well as the economy of Texas as a whole, I’m also curious to see how the economy of California will react without a huge industry like Toyota.
In our Worthington OH lunch, Toshi Amino discussed his own experiences, as he was first based in Honda’s marketing operations in California. One is that while California is a huge market and hence important in its own right, it is in many ways not representative of the US market (and is a pain logistically if you need to frequently interface with customers in the midwest and on the east coast – the majority of the US population after all remains east of the Rockies). Since Toyota grew gradually, their operations are also physically dispersed around Torrance, CA. Moving to Texas lets them put everyone in one place (outside of engineering, which is in Ann Arbor MI). For all the potential of telecommuting, that still offers advantages.