Farrell, S. (2015, Oct. 26). Volkswagen loses sales top spot to Toyota after emissions scandal. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/26/volkswagen-top-spot-toyota-vwemissions-scandal. Volkswagen has been knocked off the top spot for global car sales by Toyota after taking it from its rival earlier this year, and is likely to languish behind the Japanese firm for the foreseeable future as the emissions-rigging scandal takes full effect. Toyota said it sold 7.5m vehicles in the first nine months of the year, beating VW's 7.43m reported earlier this month. Both companies had a 1.5% fall in sales, but Toyota outsold Volkswagen in each month of the third quarter. US company General Motors (GM) is in third position after selling 7.2m vehicles, down 1.9% on a year earlier. The figures include less than two weeks of sales after Volkswagen admitted its diesel cars were fitted with a software device to manipulate emissions in official US tests. The scandal has rocked confidence in Volkswagen and has reduced its share of the European car market. VW emissions scandal: doubts grow over Winterkorn's involvement Did carmaker's ex-chief, who stepped down in late September, know more about emission problems than he said? Read more In the first half of the year, Volkswagen overtook Toyota to achieve a long-held ambition to become the world's biggest-selling carmaker. But Volkswagen is now preparing to repair 11m vehicles worldwide and has halted sales of diesel models in several markets. David Bailey, the professor of industrial strategy at Aston University, said: \"Volkswagen can say goodbye to being the biggest player for the near future. We haven't yet seen the full impact of the damage to the firm, and the scandal has killed the diesel market in the US.\" Even before the scandal erupted, some analysts thought Volkswagen's dash for global sales had masked underlying problems, making the company cumbersome and overly complex, with more than 300 models, multiple brands and almost 120 factories. Even as it became the biggest seller worldwide in the first half of the year, Volkswagen suffered its first fall in Chinese sales for a decade. The economic slowdown in China, Volkswagen's biggest market, hit demand for premium cars, leaving it reliant on low-growth European markets. Sales also fell in the US and Brazil. Martin Winterkorn, the force behind Volkswagen's global sales push, quit as chief executive last month, less than a week after the scandal broke. He had recently survived an attempted boardroom coup prompted partly by concerns Volkswagen was piling on sales while falling behind in research and failing to break the US market. Expansion in the US, where Volkswagen has struggled for years, was a big part of the company's plan to establish itself as the world's biggest carmaker. Volkswagen was targeting a near doubling of sales in the US by 2018, driven by its offer of \"clean diesel\" - a goal that now looks impossible. \"Toyota will be the No 1 for this year,\" Kji End, an auto analyst at Advanced Research Japan, told Bloomberg. \"VW may be facing sales difficulties due to the scandal toward next year in Europe and the US, and I don't see the Chinese market coming back anytime soon.\" Toyota overtook GM in 2008 and has held the No 1 position every year except for 2011 when a tsunami in north-east Japan disrupted production and allowed GM to retake the lead. German state files criminal complaint after VW file disappears Staff report that documents on carmaker's emissions scandal have vanished from chancellery of Lower Saxony Read more With Volkswagen in disarray, Toyota is preparing to release the first redesign in almost seven years of the Prius, its top-selling hybrid car, promising a sportier ride and greater fuel efficiency. Bailey said Toyota had addressed safety problems that forced it to recall about 20m vehicles and had invested large sums in developing environmentally friendly petrol-electric hybrids and, in the longer run, emission-free hydrogen cars. \"Toyota appear to has made the right bets. VW, by contrast, has gone for volume and into diesel and that looks like the wrong bet,\" Bailey said. \"Toyota has gone back to doing what it did best, which was quality and let the growth take care of itself. VW went for growth at all costs and we have seen the consequences of that.\" Volkswagen's VW brand announced a strategy overhaul this month to concentrate on electric and hybrid vehicles and revamp all diesel cars and vans with cleaner exhaust emission systems. The next version of the Phaeton saloon car will be electric and VW will develop a standardised electric toolkit for all vehicles. Lane, C. (2015, Oct. 26). Emissions scandal is hurting VW owners trying to Resell. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/2015/10/26/450238773/emissions-scandal-is-hurting-vwowners-trying-to-resell . Volkswagen admitted it intentionally cheated on federal emissions tests. The German automaker now faces billions of dollars in fines and litigation, plus the cost of fixing some 11 million diesel cars worldwide. That's just the company. The scandal is costing owners, too at least those who are trying to sell their VW diesels. Not surprisingly, resale prices for the affected cars have been falling. Just before the EPA announced that Volkswagen tricked emission inspectors, Kim Johnson started trying to sell her 2014 Jetta. "It's got four doors, it's got heated seats. It is great on gas currently," she says. Johnson says the car is pretty peppy, too. i Kim Johnson of Ridgefield, Conn., says her 2014 Jetta lost more than $1,000 in value because, once fixed, it will no longer get the advertised mileage. Charles Lane/WSHU hide caption toggle caption Charles Lane/WSHU "It is on the highway and everything, I have a lot of fun." Still, she has no offers and is upset with Volkswagen's lack of consideration for their customers. "Cheated. Cheated. We're a small business owner. If we did that to our clients we wouldn't be in business," says Johnson, who sells custom cabinets in Connecticut. She posted her Jetta on CarsGurus.com, where no one has expressed any interest in buying it. According to the site, Johnson isn't the only one. As fewer people search for Volkswagen cars affected by the scandal, prices on the site have fallen by 4.5 percent. Other sites report similar or greater cuts. "Because I think it's a tainted product now, consumers don't know what the long-term value of the cars they are buying will be or what kind of work will be needed to be done to make them pass inspection," says Dave Galvin, director of data analytics at CarGurus. Galvin says the depressed prices go beyond the cars facing recall all Volkswagens are affected. Overall, VW shoppers on his site have dropped 6 percent since the crisis began. "It's a really unfortunate thing," says Jamie Vondruska, who runs a website for the Volkswagen enthusiast called VWvortex. Volkswagen Faces Uphill Battle In Repairing Tarnished Reputation 3:54 Playlist Download Embed He says that 10 years ago, the company staked its image on being environmentally friendly. The company planted a forest and built the first green certified car factory. "Having been someone who's followed the brand for a long time, a fan of the brand and owned a lot of their cars, it's hard to imagine how this kind of thing can happen," Vondruska says. He says an unforeseen victim in all this is diesel. Volkswagen had already announced it was going to eventually phase out its diesel cars in favor of electric. "This crisis is probably going to accelerate that, a little bit. Diesel as a whole, the over the road trucks and semis, have struggled to meet the emissions. It's an uphill battle for everyone involved in selling diesel products," Vondruska says. Business How VW's Drive To Be No. 1 May Have Put It In Reverse He advises current VW owners to hang tight, because he thinks the company will eventually make a comeback. He says automakers have survived bigger recalls in the past. Some readers on his site are even calling the current price drop a buying opportunity. But Kim Johnson, still trying to sell her Jetta, doesn't see it that way. The value of her car has dropped more than 4 percent. "I don't want to be out of pocket another $1,000 or $1,500. It would be nice if VW bought all their cars back, but that's not going to happen," Johnson says. Company executives say a buyback is unlikely. They say right now they are focused on meeting EPA regulations. What VW Needs To Do To Survive Its Biggest Scandal 3:37 Playlist Download Embed The company is offering current owners a $2,000 "loyalty" bonus for another Volkswagen Case Reading Boston, W., & Houston-Waesch, M. (2015, Oct 15). Volkswagen suspends another top engineer; berlin orders recall; transport minister says recall of tainted diesel cars is mandatory. Wall Street Journal (Online). Danny, Hakim, Kessler, A. M., & Ewing, J. (2015, Sep 27). As VW pushed to be no. 1, ambitions fueled a scandal. New York Times. Ewing, J. (2015, Sep 23). Diesel scandal at VW spreads to core market. New York Times. Farrell, S. (2015, Oct. 26). Volkswagen loses sales top spot to Toyota after emissions scandal. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/26/volkswagen-topspot-toyota-vw-emissions-scandal. Fung, B. (2015). Volkswagen's U.S. CEO apologizes for emissions cheating scandal. Washington: WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post. Lane, C. (2015, Oct. 26). Emissions scandal is hurting VW owners trying to Resell. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/2015/10/26/450238773/emissions-scandal-is-hurting-vwowners-trying-to-resell . La Monica, P.,R. (2015, Sep 23). Volkswagen has plunged 50%. will it ever recover? CNN Wire Service. Sanger-Katz, M., & Schwartz, J. (2015, Sep 30). Gauging human toll of VW fraud. International New York Times. Here are some articles on brand equity and brand management. Keller, K. L. (1993). Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity. Journal of Marketing, 57(1), 1-22. Helm, S., & Tolsdorf, J. (2013). How does corporate reputation affect customer loyalty in a corporate crisis? Journal of Contingencies & Crisis Management, 21 (3), p144-152