Marketing Strategy: SWOT Analysis Of Prototon

SWOT is the combination strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. SWOT analysis is a structured planning method that evaluates those four elements of an organization or business venture. It involves specifying the objectives of the business venture or project and identifying the internal and external factors that are favourable and unfavourable to achieve that objective. To be more specify, strength represent the advantages of the internal environment of organization and weakness represent the disadvantages of the organizations’ internal environment. Other than that, opportunities are the organization’s external environmental opportunities whereby it may create chances for the organization to be more competitive in the market. Threats

As there are different income group of citizens, pricing strategy is extremely important. The moderate pricing of Proton is much more attractive and affordable to local as compare to foreign brand’s car. Therefore, the strength of coming out with attractive pricing strategy is extremely important for Proton. Besides, it has extensive nationwide distribution network whereby this helps in managing and smoothing distribute process of its vehicles and ease the after sale service process for their customers. Proton also improving from time to time which the growth of Proton has proven by the award concerning about their product and organization it received from time to time. This awards bringing the synergy on the corporate and product image. For example in April 2008 Proton has been recognized as Reader 's Digest Trusted Brand 2008 Gold Award for Car Category, Sullivan Malaysia Excellence Awards in 2010 and Malaysia Best Brand Award. Lastly, As a Government Linked Company, Proton is secured in term of financial capabilities. The company also has good corporate governance, and highly regarded by many Malaysians out of patriotism they feel for this country as proton is the first national car

Throughout the years, Proton has undergoes acquisition and internal restructuring. In year 2012 according to Bani Melhem (2016), it has been acquired by DRB-Hicom and in 2017; it is in process of acquiring by Geely (a China car manufacturer). This has leads to low confidence of Proton’s vendors. As mention in news by Low (2017), when restructuring, vendors has low confidence and negative perceptions toward the move as they strongly believe some of them would be excluded from Proton’s supply chain as Geely may choose its designated vendors from China and other countries. Besides, proton has poor reputation on product performance, functionality and product design. Proton has many models that do not capture public’s interest include Proton Savvy, Proton Juara, Proton Persona and Prevé (Bani Melhem, 2016). Proton had always been tagged as a carmaker of cheap and poor quality. The quality and performance of products often disappointed the buyers. As quoted in Bani Melhem (2016), J.D. Power in 2009 has mentioned the satisfaction levels of customers towards national vehicles were below average as compared to imported cars. Proton also has weak technology capabilities whereby they have to seek for technology assistance from overseas manufacturers. Moreover, Proton is not really innovative as some of their products are actually modified from other company for example Mitsubishi and last, it has short history