3. What the recommendations would you make to senior marketing executives going forward? What should the company be sure to do with its marketing?

As the recommendation to the marketing executives, we would ask them to become more aggressive and creative in making change and operate with other relating divisions to launch the promotion or marketing strategies that work together.

 Those strategies can be :

1.     Give special promotion to sell out he outdated products

2.     Make the marketing survey regarding the current consumer’s preference towards Sony’s product versus other competitor’s and analyzing the result

3.     Ask marketing executives from Music, Digital Music Players, and Gadget businesses to meet and discuss how to overcome the piracy problems

4.     Redesign the web and work with Music division of how to create pricing strategy for music download

5.     Buy and/or partner with other leading hardware and web development business to search more innovation and creative idea for launching new products.(BY. TONHA YIM)

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2. Where is Sony vulnerable? What should it watch out for?

What Sony is vulnerable to is the inside problems. It becomes slow in launching new product innovation. In today business, if we cannot walk ahead and stand still, it is equivalent as we walk backward. By doing nothing besides promoting the existing products, it is wasting the company’s resources such as money and time. It is conservative in producing the new thing which means it is opening the door for the competitors to come in. And these reasons make the Apple and Palm Computing to win the consumers and take away the company’s market shares. Others from Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China are appearing in front of Sony to punch the out dated products from retail stores.

Being conservative is a clear thing to failure but the company still has another big internal problem, the breakup of corporate loyalty. The problem in sales of insurance division is seen as the inception of the management issues. The top management did not make agreeable negotiation with division’s CEO and thus the bad story leaked to the public. Even worse, divisions such as music, movie and gadget businesses are walking away from each other and do not see the direction that they can go in the same direction for the best of Sony. Music division takes the reason like the piracy to prevent the loading of music in digital music player. So, why don’t they come up with win-win strategy that allows consumers to enjoy varieties of music while allowing the Music company to make profit? Does the CEO of Sony not know the problem or he just does not have the ability to integrate these divisions together?

The third bad thing is the incompetency of marketing department. The one coming up with new product idea should be from marketing, not R&D. Marketer should know what the needs are and inform R&D. But, what they are doing is just focus only on promotions, which pulls down the company’s position and the leader in technology. In such situations, they are losing 2 out of the 3 pillars of the founders, being creative in product innovation and creative in product planning and operation. But, they are just not creative enough.

While Sony is having 3 main internal problems, competitors just come in and immediately take up Sony’s market shares. They are faster, more creative, offer more economic products and newer to the customers. The result is Sony’s big drop in sales and profitability. If the problems are still unsolved, what more are the further losses of customers especially in entertaining electronic device and downloading, the prolong problem of corporate loyalty, as well as more intense competitions beyond entertainment.

So, they should look for the new management strategies to solve the internal problems as mentioned earlier and these can be achieved by redesigning of how each division can work together, how marketing should work with R&D, and how to be more aggressive to get back the market’s shares in today business.(YIM TO NHA)

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1. What have been the key success factors for Sony?

Sony Case Studies

Sony is one of the most successful Japanese companies that has built the brand through innovation and outstanding quality. Just like Toyota, Sony has worldwide brand recognition; people often pay premium for Sony brand which ranges from computers to entertaining tools and devices. Since 1957, the time that the company introduced first pocket-sized radio transistor to the world, it has been continuously come up with a unique idea of how to be the first mover in making life much more enjoyable and valuable. During the leadership of Akio Morita, Sony reached many remarkable achievements both in term of product development and marketing communication. Furthermore, the acquisitions of CBS in 1988 and Columbia Pictures in 1989 have helped to advance the position of the company as one of the leading media and entertaining industry. They add the synergy since they are in the relating businesses that can add value to each other, just like Columbia Pictures using the sound and music produced from CBS and sound devices from Sony.

With market and sales expansion, the products have reached million customers and hundred million dollars for profits. The success is also contributed by the effective marketing. Long before the sales drop in 2005, marketing was seen as the main driver of the company to communicate between the company and the customers.

With long standing in the market and the ability to raise funds both locally and internationally, Sony can win other rivalries in the market technically and financially. Technically, it has long experiences and tactics in inventing the hardware and software. Financially, it can raise funds in large amount from borrowing or shares issuing from local and foreign investors to support for the production, expansion and other project finances.

Sony has a lot of products to entertain the world. Home entertaining, photograph professionals, communication electronics, media and digital devices are all offered by the company. In each of product category, Sony brand always ranges among the best sellers and trusted quality.

Moreover, its factories in strategic locations such as in Japan, US, and Asia are the best locations that can attract talents and the locations that people believe to be the best place to buy the product. The development of the production process and development into large scale can be quickly developed and adopted. They have ready developed structure, supply chain, logistics and highly trained human resources.

Above are all the factors that lead Sony to be one of the successful conglomerates in the world.(BY.TONHA YIM)

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