Katsuto Hayashi will succeed Yoichiro Ueno as Honda Malaysia managing director and chief executive officer.
Hayashi is currently a Honda Indonesia sales and marketing director.
Hayashi
As reported here last month, Ueno will be posted to head Honda operations in India, which is the world’s fourth biggest market for the Japanese car maker after the United States, China and Japan. Ueno had helmed the Malaysian operations since January 2011.
At Honda Malaysia’s annual media gathering today, Ueno also announced that two locally assembled cars will be launched to drive 2016 target sales to 90,000 units, a reduction from all-time record sales of 94,902 units in 2015.
The reduced forecast sales target is attributed to the economic slowdown due to the weakening ringgit, the deployment of Goods and Services Tax and the oil price decline.
Ueno.
Last year saw the introduction of the CR-V and HR-V. This year’s launches would not be new segment entries as they are replacement models “with advanced features” to update the local Honda line-up. This rules out the entry of the 7-seat BR-V, which was launched in Indonesia last year.
With Thailand already selling the refreshed Accord and due to start selling the all-new Civic this month, Malaysians are likely to see both cars as potential candidates to be updated.
“Our focus is to continue to achieve highest customer satisfaction by enhancing the Honda brand and creating excellent customer experiences,” said Ueno.
“We will increase our dealerships and Body and Paint (BP) Centres to reach and serve more customers across the nation. We are targeting to increase to 95 dealers and 20 BP centres, up from the current 87 and 14 respectively. We will also introduce 2S satellite dealers to reach out to customers in sub-urban areas. We aim to provide professional after-sales services to all our customers regardless of the areas they live in.”
