Graduate to a Toyota

Good news for all you new college alumni out there...

If you have obtained a college degree in the past two years, you may qualify for the Toyota College Graduate Finance Program. Toyota is offering college grads an incentive of $1,000 to purchase a new vehicle!

To attract these college graduates, Toyota developed a website strictly to promote this deal. It comes equip with user friendly language and youthful coloring. There is even a mini-dictionary that explains contractual terms in much simpler wording.The website also has social media links to both Facebook and Twitter. It is very dissimilar from their corporate website. I think Toyota’s public relations team must have had their hands in this project.

I have to admit, I took advantage of this offer in July and I could not be happier. However, with Toyota's corporate reputation at an all time low, I wonder if this will affect their financial performance. This week I read a few scholarly articles about this topic and came to a couple conclusions. Consumers are very interested in how companies behave. This has a great deal of influence upon their consumption behavior. Thus, financial pay-off can be gained from good behavior. With all the legal claims and denial statements, it appears that Toyota has not had the best behavior this past year.

Additionally, consumers value companies with good corporate responsibility. If Toyota wants to regain credibility amongst their consumers, they should start by giving back to the community. Lastly, the greater the news coverage, the better the company's financial performance. Ideally, this would be said for positive news coverage, although scholars have yet to prove it. As I stated last week, Toyota has see a slight increase in sales over the past six months. This could be a result of all their news coverage, even if it has been predominately negative.

Catch you next week!