Purpose:  The purpose of this thesis is to examine how the major car companies have been affected by the global financial crisis. We would also want to look at how revenues and profits have been affected, and what the consequences have been both within the company and the market in general. It’s also interesting to see how profitability and financial stability has been affected. We had chosen to do a “before-after” comparison, and we chose to compare the years 2007 and 2009.

Boundaries: We have chosen to concentrate on a corporation in the Asian market, more specifically Toyota. In terms of manufactured cars Toyota is the world’s largest automotive company, and therefore it seemed natural that the choice fell on them.

Quantitative and qualitative method: We will mostly make use of qualitative approach in our investigations. This is because we want to describe, understand and analyze our chosen essay topic. The information we collect from our investigations, we will analyze with the help of our theoretical framework.  There will also be an element of quantitative studies in our approach, when we will make use of information from annual reports, etc.

Approach: We have chosen to first get our understanding and information on our essay topic by reading about the subject from earlier essays, articles from magazines, etc. We will also read about our theoretical framework to better apply the theory on information we collect. This will give us a good knowledge of the subject.

Data collection: We will in large part make use of secondary data in the form of articles from magazines, literature, information from annual reports, etc.