Ford's Strategy
Ford Motor Company is one of the first American automotive companies that today successfully manufactures and sells automobiles, trucks, buses and automotive parts. In managing the marketing function that contributes to keeping Ford Motor Company’s success in the future, an overall evaluation of the its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats is very important.
Ford Motor Company now is holding a major strength that is an internal capability helping it to reach its objects successfully: a strong financial performance. Ford is a U.S. car business that didn’t need the government bailout. The firm’s profit margin is high compared to competitors with the high liquidity ratio. Its current ratio – a ratio measures a company's ability to pay short-term debts and other current liabilities – regularly remains over 2. This shows that Ford, perhaps, has no serious financial problem. Additionally, its profit-sharing payments were approximately $8,800 per eligible employee on a full-year basis in past few years. Its strong financial capacity partly supported Ford’s managers to implement its largest manufacturing expansion in the last 50 years. This company has been increasing capacity or adding production in U.S. assembly plants, and opening four more new plants in Asia, South America and Europe. Cash contributions to funded plans were also high, around $1.5 billion globally. Clearly, Ford is raising its profit in these markets in all probability.
Besides its strength, there is an internal limitation that interferes with Ford Motor Company’s performance. A poor environmental record is its weaknesses. Ford has been criticized for poor efforts to decrease environment pollution. It was rated as the seventh worst air polluter due to its manufacturing plants and linked to 42 toxic waste sites. Although Ford has been having efforts to commit to promoting a greener lifestyle on the road through Ford’s EcoBoost engine technology and its hybrid and all-electric vehicle, it was charged the fines of about $3 million for violations of air quality laws related to sale of vehicles with non-compliant On-Board Diagnostic systems in California. This record may be an obstacle for Ford to grow its sales effectively, especially when environmental problems are customers’ concern, increasingly.
In analyzing SWOT, indicating the opportunities of a company is very essential, because these are favorable current external factors that the company may be exploit to its advantage. To Ford, the huge difference in fuel price in difference countries