Malaysian National Car Market Share: A Markov Chain Analysis

The globlisation of the world’s automotive industry and the introduction of ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) give considerable challenges to the two national automobile enterprises PROTON and PERODUA to stay resileint and competitive. The ability to control and lead the car market industry in the long term perspective is the goal of both enterprises. In realising that intention, several strategies had been formulated one of which is to increase the market share of its respective car industry. Thus a Markov Chain model is used to estimate the transition probability matrix for the passenger car buying process in Malaysia which in turn used to estimate the long term market share of the national car. Based on the available data it is found that the market share of passenger car industry is as follows: PROTON 36.3%, PERODUA 43.5%, TOYOTA 10.7%, HONDA 7.6% and DATSUN 1.9%. This information together with the information on the mean passage time show that the most popular passenger car in Malaysia is PERODUA while the most popular Japanese car in Malaysia is TOYOTA.