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Title: Applying Strategic Management to Mazda and Unilever
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1. Background of Mazda Motor and its Competitive Environment
1) Company Background
Mazda Motor Corporation is a Japanese automaker founded in 1920 based in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. From the minus operating income in 2000, over Lehman crash, now Mazda recorded the highest sales and operation income. (Figure1 and Table1)

Figure 1: Financial trend of Mazda (source from Mazda Annual Report, 2014)

Table 1: Detailed financial information of Mazda (Mazda corporate website)

Mazda doesn’t pursue sales volume, instead they pursues increasing the ratio of SKIACTIV products which introduce outstanding environmental and safety performance technologies to 85% this fiscal year.

Figure2. Mazda Annual Report, 2014

After collapse of bubble economy in Japan (1980’s), and the cause of losses related to the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Mazda faced in danger of bankruptcy, became a subsidiary of Ford Motors and welcomed a president from Ford in the late 1990’s. It was an edge if Mazda regains management prerogative or completely become an affiliate company of Ford.

2) Competitive Environments Background (circa 100 words)
G.M. Volkswagen are big three in the market and Mazda is ranked as 15 in 2010 (Table 2) (Table2. Worldwide 2010 production of the first 20 manufacturers (Genta, at el, 2014)

Car production volume worldwide has been grown rapidly between 2000 and 2010, and India, China and Mercosur countries (Latin America) have emerged rather than the traditional high production areas: North America, European and Japan. (Figure 3)

Figure 3. Evolution of production breakdown in the first decade of the 2000s, (Genta, at el, 2014)

According