Competition and Cross Culture Management Study of BMW - Example

The paper "Competition and Cross Culture Management Study of BMW" is a great example of a report on business. Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) is a German-based automobile, motorcycle, and engine manufacturing company that was founded in 1916. For a very long time now, the emphasis of BMW as a company has been on the manufacturing of luxury cars, making it earn membership with the enviable German Big 3, which together form the three best-selling luxury cars in the world (DW, 2012). Manufacturing has often taken place in five countries, where the company functions as the BMW group, including BMW Mini and Rolls-Royce.

Manufacturing since 2006 has been increasing, especially in the making of four-wheel-drive cars but Oppat (2008) laments that this has not translated into a growing revenue position for the company over the years. BMW is selected as a company of interest because it helps to understand the relationship between manufacturing and marketing, where the fact that a company is manufacturing more does not necessarily mean that it will make the best of revenues when effective marketing is absent (Yahoo Finance, 2012).

BMW is into the manufacturing of cars and motorcycles as has been stressed earlier. The company operates within the larger global car manufacturing industry. As can be seen from the figure below, the industry has been experiencing increases in revenue since 2009 but the rate of growth has been largely undulating, signifying stronger internal competition. Figure 1: Global car manufacturing industry value ($ billion) Source: MarketLine (2014) For a very long time, BMW’s target market has been the high class in society who are in a position to affording expensive luxury cars (DW, 2012).

Just like the overall car manufacturing industry, BMW has had geographic segmentations including Asia-Pacific, Europe, Americas, and the Middle East and Africa. Figure 2 shows the differences in percentage share that the overall industry had in each of these geographic segments by the end of 2013. Figure 2: Industry geography segmentation percentage share Source: MarketLine (2014) The four largest global competitors that BMW competes with are Volkswagen AG, Toyota Motor Company, General Motors, and Hyundai.