Hyundai Motor Launching Full-Scale Sales Promotion in Japan

Byung-Yun Park, President and CEO of Hyundai Motor Japan, being interviewed by J-CAST

   Hyundai Motor came into the Japanese markets in 2000. It, however, had kept suffering stagnant sales. In fiscal 2005, the company could achieve only about one half of its sales target of 5,000 cars. It had grown to be the seventh largest carmaker in the world then, but Toyota Motor Corp., Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. and other Japanese major car manufacturers were too strong competitors for Hyundai. Its sales efforts in Japan were also adversely affected by the image still held by the Japanese consumers that South Korean cars were "cheap and of bad quality."

Quality Now Can be Compared Favorably with Japanese Cars

   The reason why Hyundai has now decided to make positive efforts to promote its sales in Japan is that "the quality of the Hyundai cars, such as the performance and maneuverability has now been improved to such a level that they are just as good as Japanese cars," said Park. An American car quality rating company reports that Hyundai cars are now comparable with Toyota and ranked higher.
   So, Park said:
"We felt 57 was too few a number of dealers we should have across Japan to let the people know more about the Hyundai cars and the high quality of our vehicles. We hope to have at least two dealers in each prefectures of Japan."
   Hyundai is thus planning to have 100 dealers in Japan in the next two or three years.

Urgently Needed to Increase Types of Cars for Sale,
Such as Minivans

   In its worldwide sales strategy, Hyundai plans to expand the types of cars offers to the markets by 1.5 times in the next five years. It, however, currently sells only six types of cars in Japan. The company needs to expand the types of cars urgently to meet the wide variety of needs in Japan.

   For this, "What lacks from the line of cars sold in Japan is the minivan. Demand for this type of cars is great in Japan, and we can hope to sell them well," he noted. The cars marketed in the United States and other countries are of large sizes, and they are likely to be shunned if they are introduced in Japan as they are. The company thus plans to modify them before bringing them into the Japanese markets.

(Click here for J-CAST's interview with Park.)