The Impact Of Product Adaptation On The Ghanaian Automobile Market

The need to develop products or services that are suitable to the needs and conditions of themarket within which they are sold cannot be over looked.The abilities for companies to sense and respond to market demands by offering modifiedproducts forms the foundation of which most marketing thoughts has been established.This however possess a big challenge to companies when making product decisions as towhether to modify their products to suit a new emerging, promising but small market like that ofGhana.My study focuses on the examination of factors that drives for product adaptation in theGhanaian automobile market as well as the impact of such adaptations on the market.My study is designed on both quantitative and qualitative approaches using case study andsurvey to develop insight into the drivers of product adaptation, importantly how specific driversinfluence the decision and strategies adopted by local managers. Toyota Ghana CompanyLimited is used as my case study because they are widely known to favor product adaptation andfor which country managers possesses the autonomy to make modifications to core products tosuit environmental conditions.This thesis is divided into five chapters, the first chapter is introduction which describes theproduct adaptation concepts, the background, objectives of the study as well as limitations, scopeand problem statement. Chapter two is literature review which describes various theories relatingto the topic in question and previous works done by others. This chapter consequently exploresthe theories applicable to the study.Chapter three is the Methodology, this chapter introduces the methodology that was used, thestrategy and approach of the research. This chapter also describes the product adaptation analysisof the Ghanaian automobile market as well as the characteristics and the effect of productadaption on the Ghanaian market, the method of data capture, data analysis and results of study.Chapter four presents how to improve product adaptation for the Ghanaian automobile market.Chapter five is conclusion and prospection and interprets the results of the study with respect tothe study’s research objectives as well as research questions.