Provide Opinion/ Insight on this response:

1) High Involvement Product w/ Issues: Teslas Electric Vehicles (EV)

2) Background + Hypothesis: Teslas Reshaping of the EV Industry + Current Potential Issues

Environmental pressures have caused many industries to evolve but maybe none quite as much as one of the automotive industry. Tesla has been a pioneer in redefining the electric vehicle (EV) market developing options that are more accessible and realistic for everyday use. Teslas number one selling car is the Tesla Model Y (Echeverria, 2022). While the company has seen much success since its inception, company planners have noticed their inventory backing up more than usual at production facilities as of late with a 71% increase in carryover inventory year-over-year (Jin, 2022; MacroTrends, 2022). The following hypotheses have been made based on respective rationale.

Hypotheses:

Mismatch between 5 Ps with the perceived value, service quality, and product quality provided for the vehicle not aligning with the price of the vehicle.

Rationale: Teslas cost of ownership comes at a premium, however, the customer support and maintenance support for issues is not yet fully developed to match the expectations of the target market that can afford these vehicles.

Target market has shifted as company image and EV development has evolved with product quality and attributes no longer in alignment.

Rationale: Teslas original target market attracted Tech industry moguls of Silicon Valley with a luxury electric sports car whereas todays EV consumer consists of established upper middle class families with kids that are looking for a more functional vehicle.

External macro environmental/market pressures are impacting expected sales rate.

Rationale: Car sales are softening in the marketplace with customers increasingly putting off high end car purchases due to inflation leading to poor economic environment and increased lower-cost competition providing a reasonable alternative to EV shoppers to switch.

3) Intro Design Summary + Research Phases: Research Design Proposal + Goals

Further research is needed to understand what is causing inventory levels to rise. To understand these issues, an initial 2-phase research plan is suggested focusing on exploratory secondary research in an effort to expediate information gathering since it is information that is already available and will not require a lot of upfront funding approvals. These phases of secondary research include:

Phase 1: Secondary research will explore overall market trends, competitive analysis, and current economic conditions that may be influencing the EV industry via traditional sources such as economic industry reports, published articles, journals, government sources, and business sites to inform Hypothesis 3.

Phase 2: Research will concentrate on primarily Hypothesis 2 while beginning to inform Hypothesis 1 by leveraging traditional and non-traditional secondary research sources to inform a complete target market and consumer segmentation analysis to aid in understanding primary motivations, purchasing behavior, and consumption habits.

Each phase includes more detailed descriptions inclusive of SMART research objectives so they are clearly defined as to what is expected of each phase.

Phase 1 (hypothesis 3): Secondary Market Research to evaluate external market factors via economic industry research reports to understand market trends, competitive analysis, and economic conditions within the electric vehicle (EV) industry.

SMART Objective: (What) Conduct internal and external secondary exploratory research (How) via economic industry research reports and internal company data including overall market trends, economic conditions, and overall industry sales plus company sales (When) over the past 5 years (Why) to understand if there are macro factors to sales softening leading to a higher than normal inventory carryover for (Who) major players in the EV and overall automotive industry (Where) in the United States.

Specific: (What) Conduct internal and external secondary exploratory research (How) via economic industry research reports and internal company data including overall market trends, economic conditions, and overall industry sales plus company sales (Why) to understand if there are macro factors to sales softening leading to a higher than normal inventory carryover for (Who) major players in the EV and overall automotive industry (Where) in the United States.

Measurable: Research purpose is to collect and measure industry market trends against current internal company projections.

Achievable: Goal of research is to understand the overall market conditions affecting normal inventory rates.

Relevant: Research will aid in determining if there are macro factors and other industry trends impacting inventory planning projections and overall market conditions.

Timebound: Research will cover trends over the last 5 years and will be completed by the end of January 2023.

Phase 2 (hypothesis 2): Secondary Market Research to conduct EV industry target market analysis and segmentation via exploratory research to understand primary motivations, purchasing behavior, and consumption habits.

SMART Objective: (What) Conduct internal and external exploratory research of general target market analysis of automotive and EV industry audiences (How) including industry trends, sales, internal data, trade publications, and articles (Why) to understand if there have been any changes in purchasing behavior or consumption habits (Drze & Nunes, 2006) (When) over the last 3 years of (Who) general consumers who drive in the (Where) United States.

Specific: (What) Conduct internal and external exploratory research of general target market analysis of automotive and EV industry audiences (How) including industry trends, sales, internal data, trade publications, and articles (Why) to understand if there have been any changes in purchasing behavior or consumption habits (Who) general consumers who drive in the (Where) United States.

Measurable: Research will be collected to compare results against current identified target market and purchasing behaviors.

Achievable: Goal of research is to compare/contrast current target audiences against the target EV audience identified through secondary research using traditional and scraping non-traditional sources such as social media, EV community pages, and overall social sentiment.

Relevant: Actions will be taken to make adjustments based on learnings to prepare and guide quantitative phases.

Timebound: Research will include traditional and non-traditional exploratory research reviewing consumer trends over the last 3 years and will be completed by the end of April 2023.

4) Conclusion: How Secondary Research will Provide Insights towards Hypotheses

This initial two phase research proposal focuses on secondary research to gather insights and aim to support or refute the above proposed hypotheses as to why carry-over inventory is greater than expected. While the problem is that Teslas sales are slowing and are not selling at the expected rate which leads to the symptom of having to report/fund more inventory carry-over than anticipated, the research problem/question is:

Collect data to understand why inventory levels are higher than Planners calculated when planning out production and inventory levels for the fiscal year.

Answering this research question through the above outlined phases will help Tesla executives understand the cause of the slowing sales and inventory back-up. Phase 1 will provide an overarching updated understanding of the EV industry and its current state. Phase 2 will provide a more granular understanding of our current consumer path to purchase, influencing factors/motivations, and overall decision making process.

Both initial phases will leverage exploratory data for cost and timing efficiencies, but will likely lead to descriptive, conclusive research and eventually causal research to understand if there is a cause and effect relationship between variables in the industry as the research proposal continues into the primary resarch gathering phase. Primary research will focus on more qualitative and quantitative data that is more uniquely customized to Tesla specifically.