Ford Inc.- Revised the Ford

Ford Inc.- Revised The Ford Motor Company did not have an easy time dealing with the economic crash in 2008 and 2009. The company's losses totalled billions, and it had to apply for federal bailout money in order to stay in business. Fortunately for the company, its customers quickly turned around as the economy grew better, and Ford is once again bringing in large profits. Its stock price has also climbed up greatly since the recession.

At the end of February, 2009, Ford's stock price was $1.98, whereas it is now at $16.09, over 8 times as high (Google Finance, 2011). With this newfound success after a wave of failures, Ford has positioned itself as a money-making company, and has adopted a new corporate-level strategy in order to compete in a fast-changing vehicle market and deliver to customers the kinds of vehicles that they want.

This new strategy can best be described as keeping a wide scope of diversified products, while being focused around smaller, more-efficient cars and expanding into new countries and markets. One part of corporate-level strategy is deciding what businesses a firm should be focusing on. For many years, Ford poured much manpower and finances into large, powerful trucks, that sold very well. However, the demand for trucks has gone down, due to higher oil and gas prices.

This means it costs more for people to fill up their gas tanks and drive their cars and trucks to work, school or stores. As a result, Ford and other car companies are competing with each other over who can make vehicles that use the least amount of fuel and cost the least amount to fill up with gas.

Ford has shifted away from larger trucks and has made several hybrid vehicles, that use both gas and electricity, and is also working on fully electric vehicles that would use no gas at all. With competitors like GM, Toyota and Nissan all going for the smaller, fuel-efficient market, Ford is competing directly with them and is moving away from its bigger, gas-using trucks that had once been very popular. It has formed few alliances with its competitors, and is faring quite well in head-to-head competition.

At the same time, Ford has not shied away entirely from larger vehicles. It still offers a range of crossovers, SUVs and trucks with powerful motors and towing capacity, and has expanded its product line in the last year, now that the economy has picked up again (Ford, 2010). This allows it to compete in a market with limited competition, since companies like Toyota and Nissan do not offer many large vehicles.

However, Ford is not offering as great a variety as GM or Chrysler, which have many trucks and SUVs to choose from. This is still beneficial for the company: it is able to compete in the large vehicle market, but has a reduced number of vehicles in comparison to its competitors, so it is not wasting money on developing and assembling too many different models.

Lastly, with a strong variety of vehicle options, Ford has expanded into new markets, and is competing with companies like Toyota and Kia right in their own backyard. Countries such as China, Japan and Taiwan have all seen Ford operations and sales increase, as the company expands and deepens its roots in international markets (Ford 2010). The economic booms of far-east countries.