Fascinating look from a sociologist's point of view of Toyota's marketing programs and Toyota buyers and 'supporters'.
Lots of good information about many things concerning Toyota and ( most of ) their activities here in the United States.
Some of those topics would be:
Toyota: Reality versus Perception
Toyota’s Fallibility
Toyota Propaganda
Toyota’s Pseudo-Heritage
Toyota’s Pseudo-Environmentalism
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This is a repost of a thread I started yesterday that I can no longer find.
The following excerpts which represent way less than 4% of the article's text are some that GMI'ers may find interesting - although really that applies to the entire article.
These start to explain a great many things we've all seen or heard concerning Toyota - including here at GMI.
http://web.cortland.edu/tnyjs/2008_f...YJS%202008.pdf
Quote:
New York Journal of Sociology, 2008, Vol. 1, pp. 91-116
TOYOTA’S WILLING STOOGES:
THE TREND OF NARCISSISM IN US SOCIETY
George Lundskow*
Grand Valley State University
This paper explores the exaltation that Toyota buyers grant the corporation, beyond simply commitment to their cars as desirable product.
Although once superior in reliability, mile-age, and other measurable factors in the 1980s, American and European manufacturers have matched or exceeded Toyota in these areas.
Toyota devotees still declare these areas as important, but Toyota’s following also includes a type of devotion beyond measurable quality and mileage issues.
As a company, Toyota enjoys a type of uncritical acceptance that it exploits with marketing techniques that cross into the realm of propaganda.
The paper identifies these techniques, but also argues that such techniques only succeed among a willingly submissive and willfully uncritical, i.e. emotionally devoted following premised on narcissistic insecurity and indulgence.
The paper finishes with broader conclusions about contemporary American culture, specifically the search for stability and meaning.
In this way, Toyota serves as only one example of a larger trend in US society.
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While acknowledging past achievements, this paper argues that Toyota devotees overlook such failings, and more significantly, devotees do not much care about nor respond to facts.
Rather, I argue that Toyota’s perceived environmental and quality superiority relies on narcissistic tendencies in American culture, that people respond to inner feelings of insecurity that crave external reassurance, not active involvement in the form of critical awareness.
The paper will first explore some of the complex reality behind Toyota and the automobile industry, to show how reality differs from popular perception, and then develop a social-psychological explanation for this in-congruence.
* Direct all correspondence to George Lundskow, Department of Sociology, 2170 AuSable Hall, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI 49401 or via e-mail: lundskog@gvsu.edu
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This suggests a disparity between measurable facts and public perception.
This disparity suggests that Toyota’s current and increasing success depends ever less on actual quality—which is declining—and ever more on marketing, political influence, and clever public manipulation.
However, Toyota has not created this situation, but rather, seizes upon preexisting opportunity—a public desperate for good feelings about themselves.
Any company that can connect self-esteem with their products would create a sort of halo, a feeling that good people buy this or that good product.
After all, cars do pollute, both in their manufacture and operation, yet Americans vitally depend on cars, and indeed enjoy driving them.
For those drivers who crave recognition as both a ‘good person’ and as ‘environmentally responsible,’ this kind of social-psychological conflict enables a propagandistic turn in Toyota’s advertising and press rhetoric.
web.cortland.edu/tnyjs/2008_files/03 LUNDSKOW NYJS 2008.pdf
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