Target costing is defined as companywide profit management activity during the new product development stage that includes: (1)planning products that have customer-pleasing quality,(2) determining target costs (including target investment costs) for t...
Target costing is defined as companywide profit management activity during the new product development stage that includes: (1)planning products that have customer-pleasing quality,(2) determining target costs (including target investment costs) for the new product to yield the target profit required over the medium to long term given the current market conditions and (3)devising ways to make the product design achieve target costs while also satisfying customer needs for quality and prompt delivery. Therefore, this paper attempts to study target costing system and to analyze the effectiveness of target costing system in Korean automakers and their parts suppliers. To achieve the objective, this paper has devoted attention to the impact of target costing system on the financial- and nonfinancial-focused management performance that would be helpful in achieving goal settled in target costing system. To test the hypotheses which are proposed with respect to the financial- and nonfinancial-focused management performance, an empirical research was conducted on 2 vehicle manufacturers and 37 their parts manufacturers. For the purpose of the empirical research, this paper used the data are available from public sources and the questionnaire survey data. The questionnaires were primarily designed to collect specific information about the nonfinancial-focused management performance.