Case Study - Toyota Prius: Micro Environment

The micro environment is the actors close to the company that affect its ability to serve its customers such as the company, suppliers, and competitors and so on.(Book) The type of micro environmental factors that affected both the first and second generation models of Toyota Prius would be mainly in my opinion the customers and competitors. Now one of the main things that a car owner looks at is the gas prices. As throughout the years the gas prices have been raising up, and this became a great problem to the owners. So Toyota was smart enough to construct a vehicle that would allow people to save on gas as well as provide good and efficient service to put this problem to an end. On top of these amazing points, the first generation might not have been the most luxurious looking car, but it did help this gas crisis and customers did buy a big amount of this vehicle.(book) The following factor would be the competitors. One good example would be the Honda Company or even General Motors, which started enhancing this great idea of the hybrid vehicles and began implying this idea to their vehicles. Now what Toyota did was upgrade the first generation Prius to a second generation Prius. This second generation vehicle consists with more technical advances, more room and several other factors like the design was much better looking, which came in seven colors, a single push button, and more which caught the attention of many customers.(book) But, one of the best things about this generation was that it was even more fuel efficient.