Nissan’s external environment

Natural Environment

Nissan’s “ultimate goal”

Nissan’s is one of the top producers of automobile company which they used up many environmental resources because cars basically run on fossil fuel and gasoline. As a global manufacturer of automobile, Nissan have set an ultimate goal which is to ‘manage the environmental impact generated by (Nissan Global)Nissan’s corporate activities, customer use of Nissan vehicles, and the company’s use of resources on a level that is within nature’s capacity to absorb.’ Nissan’s aim is also to ‘minimize the impact of earth from (Nissan, 2009)

Key Issues of Nissan

Nissan now focuses on the 3 Key issues which are:-

• To reduce the Carbon Dioxide emission,
• To reduce other emission to preserve earth resources including the atmosphere, soil and water
• To promote the resources cycle through 3r’s, Reduction, Reuse & Recycle.

Task 1. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions

Nissan believe that reducing the CO2 emission requires not only by Nissan alone but also a cooperative efforts by all society. Nissan is also making aggressive efforts in reducing the Carbon Monoxide emission in their business activities and thus, their effort will lead to contribution of the society.

Task 2. Reducing emissions*1 (protecting the air, water and soil)

Nissan’s 2nd task is to reduce any emission that will have negative impact on earth resources including the atmosphere, air, water and soil. According to Nissan, it is a requirement for them to consider the life cycle of their vehicle from the vehicle’s development to production and finally to the vehicle’s disposal.

Task 3. Resource recycling (promoting reducing, reusing, and recycling)

Nissan’s aim is to achieve the mobile society through automobile recycling. According to Nissan basic approach, they are implementing the 3 R’s to use their resource effective and efficiently. The 3 R’s are:-

• Reduce
• Reuse
• Recycle

They are planning to reduce the material to its minimal when producing their automobile, reuse the resources whenever possible and recycle their resources for the future use.

Technology Environment

Nissan has four areas of technological goals which include the environment, safety, dynamic performance and life on board. Nissan create these values in order to provide their customers with ‘trusted driving pleasure’. (Nissan Global)

Environment

Nissan has a long term goal to reducing CO2 help the environmental crisis such as global warming. With this goal, Nissan had set their target of reducing CO2 emission in their new car by 70% in the year 2050. (Nissan Environmental Technologies)

Safety

Nissan claims that their aim is to reduce the number of serious and fatal injuries from accidents involving Nissan’s vehicle by halve by the year 2015. Nissan has work hard to progressively design a safer vehicle to the customer based on real world accident analysis. Nissan carried out various crash test from normal driving accident to serious and fatal accidents to be analyzed and to provide continuous improvements onto Nissan’s vehicle. (Nissan Safety Technologies)

Dynamic Performance

Nissan focuses on qualities such as quietness of the vehicle and the power response. The vehicle handling however such as steering stability, steering responsiveness and vehicle behavior are very important to please the driver of Nissan’s vehicle according to Nissan. (Nissan Dynamic Performance)

Life on Board

Nissan vehicle provides an unprecedented value through their every stage from getting into vehicle, preparation to drive, actual driving experience and to getting out from the vehicle. Nissan is also delivering the three kinds of value on the driving experience on Nissan vehicle. (Nissan Life on Board)

• Cockpit which are design for easy driving
• Cabin comfort
• High quality of the interior

Sociocultural Environment

Nissan is building and manufacturing cars to meet all types of people’s demand. Different people would prefer different types of cars depending on the consumer itself. Assume that if a person prefer vehicle that can go off-road, he could have prefered Nissan Xterra or Nissan Frontier whereas people who are rich and like fast cars would go for cars like Nissan Silvia, Nissan Skyline or Nissan Fairlady 350z. Not all types of driver are suited for all types of cars. This is the reason why Nissan Build many different types of vehicle to suit different types of driver. Below are the some of the lists of different category of Nissan vehicle that are still on production today.

Nissan for the adrenaline and want-to-go-fast guys:

• Nissan Skyline GT-R 35
• Nissan 370z

Nissan for the adventurous and explorer:

• Nissan X-trail
• Nissan Navara
• Nissan Frontier

Nissan for the budget driver:

• Nissan Latio
• Nissan Sentra
• Nissan March

International Environment

Nissan Company succeeded in selling their automobiles internationally in every continent. This means that Nissan is an international company. Although it’s availability all around the world, Nissan has to compete on a global basis because there are many high-quality and low price automobiles from all around the world including Toyota, Ford, Mitsubishi and many other more. The international environment provides new competitors, customers and suppliers from everywhere. Although is a good thing Nissan expands their business internationally, this will make the company even harder to control as there are many branches everywhere in the world where Nissan has to retain the standards of every Nissan branches in terms of their services. Nissan would also have to make their automobile available to every place with Nissan branch where they either ship their automobile internationally or the automobile is manufactured locally.

Economic Environment

Nissan and Renault established as the Renault-Nissan Purchasing Organization (RNPO) in the year 2001. This was key ways to reduce cost by combining both their resources to be more efficient in the organization. Renault and Nissan currently hold 60% shares some part and raw materials suppliers. (Agrawal, 2007)

Legal and Political Environment

Nissan vehicle have to meet certain standards to be able to enter certain countries to be sold. This is due to the fact that certain states do not allow high performance vehicle such as Nissan Skyline models to enter the state because driver might misuse the vehicle for illegal street racing.

Besides high performance automobile, Nissan also needs to meet the Emission Standards whereby it is a requirement that set a specific limit of the pollution produce by an automobile that are released to the environment. These standards are to protect the environment of any air pollution to the country as this may lead to global warming. Emissions that are being tested include carbon monoxide, hydrocarbon, sulfur oxide and others.

Aside from that also, there is also safety standards that should be tested before the vehicle is legally produce to the market. In other words, the vehicle should be safe enough for the driver in meeting the safety standards. The safety standards include:

Crash Avoidance Control whereby in an event of emergencies, can the vehicle respond when the driver avoids a crash.

Crashworthiness is when the vehicle crashes, the vehicle should be safe enough to protect the driver and its passengers. This test will determine the airbag responsiveness, impacts, safety belts and others. (TRANSPORTATION, 1999)