A journey across the sea from the land of the rising sun to work as a president of Mazda Sales Thailand Co., Ltd. is a huge challenge at a time when people around the world are facing a long-lasting crisis from the Covid-19 pandemic, a time amid the tension of international trade war and under the situation that the global automotive industry is affected by a shortage of semi-conductor, including the Thai automotive industry that affects people’s way of life and change consumer behavior.

Today, we will reveal the thought the president of Mazda Sales Thailanf Mr. Tadashi Miura, who is experienced and has been working in serveral global market in automotive industry and coming to Thailand. It is a huge challenge for him to drive Mazda's business development plan to achieve its sales target of 45,000 units.

Mr. Tadashi Miura has been working for Mazda Motor Corporation for more than 30 years, mainly in the area of sales, marketing and strategic planning for overseas markets. Before coming to Thailand, he has been in charge of serveral global markets namely, Europe, North America, Oceania, Russia etc. The latest oversea assignment was Taiwan and today he is ready to drive business of Mazda in Thailand. 

Working style in different markets

People in different culture work differently, however, they have things in common. In Thailand, I feel that people work hard for their companies, have their own tasks, work as a team, collaborate and support each others, which Japanese also do. At the same time, Thai people are more individual than Japanese and focus on their own tasks. I would like to harmonize these two cultures and establish our own Mazda way.

Ready to bring knowledge and experience gained from overseas markets to apply to Thai Market

The advantage of working in different markets and countries is that I could see varieties of customer and dealer needs and gained more knowledge of how to satisfy their needs rather than working in one country. This allows me to to penetrate best practice of one market into other markets. In all countries, expectation to Mazda brand is quite high, which is good for us. I would like to introduce initiatives, which I learned from past experience as much as possible, to fulfill customer needs and enhance Mazda brand in the next two or three years followed by CPO which Mazda has just launched recently.

Personal working vision and philosophy

I was born and in Hiroshima. Hiroshima peeople are said to be passionate, optimistic, full of curiosity. I was born and grown up in Hiroshima, therefore, I have those kind of characters in some degree. My final goal is to bring people happiness. People mean customers, dealers and evey stakefolder.

With these, I would like to bring people happiness with One Team and Omotenashi Spirit. Firstly, One Team, teamwork is essentially important. People cannot bring anything without support from others. Also, teamwork will give us opportunity to exchange ideas and strengthen each people to drive work to the highest efficiency under same goal. Secondly, Omotenashi spirit is another philosophy which I would like my team to always keep in mind. This is not just spirit of hospitality, but to bring eveybody smile with something beyond expectation. I know that this is very difficult for us to accomplish, but we would like bring cusomers not just pure customer satisfaction but also something beyond expectation. Not just completion of the service but we would like customers surprise. Not only bring customers peace of mind but bring trust. Not only bring delight but also warmth. I would like to try to penetrate this philosophy into my teams during my period.

Mazda’s Business development policy in Thailand

As I made a presentation at media conference in April, my ultimate goal is to further improve customer satisfaction through all cusomer joyney with Mazda from purchase to re-purchae. Therefore, I would like to accelerate to change our business model to retention business model. For this purpose, we need to enhance Mazda brand further. My key index we should focus is customers’ brand likability to Mazda and more importantly, residual value. I am not hesitant to take any actions to improve residual value of customers’ valuable assets.  

Economic situation in Thailand and aspects of Thai automotive industry

Thai economic outlook in 2022 is (according to NESDC) projected to expand in the range of 2.5%-3.5%, mainly supported by 1. Improvement of domestic demand 2. Recovery of domestic tourism 3. Continuous expansion of export. We believe that Thai economy is expected to recover but we still have to keep our eyes on other negative factors, such as oil price, inflation and matters between Russia and Ulcrine. Also, shortage of semi-conductor is another factor which negatively reflects Thai automotive industry. Our expectation of Thai automotive industry in 2022 is about 820,000 – 850,000 units.

Aspects of Mazda in Thailand

The Thai automotive industry is highly challenging. For Mazda Motor Corporation, Thailand is one of the markets which they have a priority. Thai people are enthusiastic for new car launch as we can see from several car shows. This is a reason why Mazda has been introducing products to the market continuously. We never forget that expectation to Mazda by Thai customers is very high, which we need to fulfill their expection.

Our priority for this period are;

1. Continue to keep our customers happy and smiled with Mazda Brand Value.
2. Focus on improving customer experience at all touchpoints including digital.
3. Accelerate customer care and CRM to enhance Mazda ownership benefit.
4. Strengthen our dealer network operation to grow their business sustainably and to  serve our customers better customer satisfaction.

Introduction of EV in Thailand

We are now under study and plan to launch EV in Thai market in the future. The good point is we have more time to develop the EV and have time to do research on customers’s opinion about the pro and con from the available EV in the market.

Although Mazda is not a big player in the market, we have been fiding our own ways to compete as a small player with our unique technology and design. This enables us to be chosen by customers from over the world and we have many of Mazda fan. We believe that our vehicle will be able to compete with new competitors and we will try our best to make our vehicles to be chosen by customers.

This is Mazda business development plan and perspective of the Japanese leader who will bring his experiences from overseas market to apply to Thai market for achieving Mazda’s sustainable growth, to create long-term relationship with customers and create maximum customer satisfaction.