Toyota Will Continue Big Marketing Spending in 2010

Following the record $1 billion marketing push in the fourth quarter of 2009, Japanese carmaker Toyota announced plans to continue spending big time on advertising its products, in the hope the sales revival experienced in December 2009 will continue into the new year as well. No specific details on how much the carmaker will spend or on how the marketing approach will look like have been provided.

"We will spend more money because there will be more business out there," Toyota Division General Manager Bob Carter was quoted as saying by Autonews. "We were really pleased the way the fourth quarter came together. The market is slowly starting to climb -- most important, the retail market."

Toyota registered a 36 percent in sales in the US in December, with an overall industry revival running in the background. The whole year remained poor in terms of sales, with a 19 percent decrease in numbers, but with a slightly better market share on account of the overall industry shrinkage: 14.3 percent from 13.9 percent in 2008.

Despite the outrage caused by the deadly accelerator pedal in Toyota vehicles and the worldwide turmoil of Earth's largest carmaker, Toyota remained the best selling brand in the US in 2009 and became, for the first time, the first in retail sales, topping General Motors.

With a projected 11.5 million vehicles to be sold in the US in 2010, up from last year's 10.4 million, Toyota has all the reasons to hope the marketing gamble they are planning will pay off.