The company’s situation:

This case is designed to provide information on the nature of Son’s Business in the
television market, brief history of company’s progress over the time, goals and
objectives and position of the company in the future.

Goals and Objectives of the company:

The main objective of the Sony Corporation is, was to design and create innovative
quality products which benefits to people.

Marketing objectives & Challenges:

Increase sale of Sony innovative quality products, as well as deliver value to Sony
customers and partners. Sony has experienced decline in sales in consumer electronics
that forced Sony to respond to declining price units, this resulted in size reduction of
TVs screen. Job cuts of more than 16000 and shutting down of sic production bases.
Price increase in raw material also one of the reasons for threat.

Strategic Analysis:
 Generic business strategic
 SWOT Analysis
 Porter’s five Force Analysis
 Competitor Analysis

Generic Business Level Strategies

Differentiation: Sony differentiates itself from other companies by offering moderately
priced, high quality products. Sony also sets itself apart by offering a choice for
everyone. Sony’s product quality, service and supply chain activities are extensive.

Sony has strong brand quality.Their involvement does not end with a customer’s
purchase of a Sony product. Rather, it continues until the product has been recycled or
has been completely disposed of. Sony is encouraging their employees engaged in
product planning to take this long relationship into consideration. As product features
and customer needs evolve over time, they will adjust their product communications
accordingly to best serve their customers.

SWOT Analysis
Strength:
The greatest strength of Sony is their ability to produce innovative quality products.
Sony innovations have become part of mainstream culture; Sony is the company of
Firsts, Sony website. The other ability of Sony is their success in several different
markets. Sony has made an impact in electronic videogames, computer, and especially
in televisions.

The other strengths are:

 Strong Sony brand image
 Worldwide reputation
 Leadership in make share
 Diversification in Manufacturing Locations Around the World
 Ability to Provide High Motivation to Its Employees
 Loyal Customers
 Supply chain
 Broad product range and High Quality Products
 High Technology
 Pioneer in the Industry as Being Creative and Innovative
 Strong Support R&D Activities

Weakness:
 Over confidence which sometimes not paying attentions to rivals
 Diversification is not always suitable business
 Their insists on their own format
 Competitively high prices
 Decline in product competiveness
 Costumer satisfaction issues
 Overleveraged financial position
 Current exchanges
 Yen’s appreciation
 Faulty products
 Expensive hardware

Opportunities:
 Business Reorganization
Allocate management resources
Divest, downsize, withdraw from certain areas
Large scale, worldwide layoffs
 Partnership with FIFA
Sponsorship includes 2010 & 2014 World Cups
Enhance brand awareness, recognition, and trust
 Expand Consumer Electronics Market
Industry expected growth of $171 billion in 2009
Blu-Ray DVDs expected sales more than $1.2 billion for 2009
 Continuous growth in their sectors
Increasing demand in technological products around the world
Acquisitions
Innovations
New markets
china upcoming economy
Increasing purchase power

Threats:
 Threats Integration of joint ventures & alliances
 Aligned with Samsung to market S-LCD panels
 Result was net loss of $100 million for fiscal year 2005-2006
 Increasing price of raw materials
 Unstable supply & demand conditions
 Currency exchange risk
 Expected increase of $350 million for 2008-2009 fiscal year
 Counterfeit goods
 Cheaper technology
 Economic meltdown
 External factors
 Lower cost of competitors and or imports
 Prices wars
 Short products cycles
 Imitation of brand and technology
In the market of LCD televisions, Sony excels but still face strong competition from
Samsung, sharp, Panasonic. Many of these brands appear in DVD players that Sony has
also to compete with.
Porter’s Five Forces Analysis:
 Industry Analysis
1. Threat from new entrants -Low
2. Bargain power of Buyers- High
3. Bargain power of suppliers- Low
4. Rivalry among existing firms – High
5. Threat of Substitute products- Low

Sony Competitor Analysis

Sony has huge competitors in every business level ie. Consumer electronics, music
industry, movies, games.

 Low PBR (price-to-book ratio)

  LCD TVs are Sony’s leading revenue driver
 At a disadvantage since they don’t make LCD panels (all their competitors do)
 Toshiba and Sharp top competitors in Japan
 Panasonic net income, profit, operating profit ALL increased in fiscal year 2007-
2008
 Sony operating income down 57.2% for same period

Sony Product Strategy

Sony has been a leader in motion picture, television, computer entertainment, music
and online businesses.The product that demonstrates this leadership is Sony’s new
BRAVIA XBR9 series televisions.

Major Features:
Ethernet connection that gives the largest selections of free and premium movies, TV
shows, and sports out there.
Full HD vibrant screen
Sony’s new Motion flow 240Hz technology, which delivers exceptionally crisp and
detailed images by quadrupling the frame rate of conventional LCD TVs.

Sony Marketing Strategies

Sony’s Target Market:

1. Demographics
Sony is a diverse brand that provides products and services for a wide variety of people.
Sony will focus on expanding their segments in the women’s market. Women make up
over half the sales in consumer electronics and influence over 80% of purchases.

2. Sony Differentiation:
Quality: Sony strives on innovative products that are easy for consumers to use.

Market Leader: Sony is the market leader in electronics. In particular Sony is the
number one leader in television market share.

Sony Positioning: Sony is one of the world’s greatest brands in the eye of the
consumer. Sony products are considered to be high quality, unique, and convenient.
Mainstream culture has embraced Sony’s innovation.
Sony Promotional Strategies:
1. Company’s pricing Strategy
Sony TV’s pricing strategy follows market-skimming, product line pricing and product
bundle pricing. The price range of Sony TVs starts from $400 to more than $20,000.
Sony starts with high prices to sell its new TVs and then gradually lowers price. Sony sets
different levels of prices for Televisions with different features.
Different factors affect pricing policy of Sony i.e.; internal and external. Sony use
skimming price strategy for its high priced high quality products, and maintains its high
prices, rather than following strategy of lowering its prices over time to skim successive
market segments.

Internal factors: Marketing objectives, Marketing mix strategy, cost and organization
goals.
External factors: nature and demand of market, competition and some other aspects.
The nature and demand of market comes for demand for new TVs and LCD or HD TVs.
As competition drives the pricing, and Sony is always in competition to offer best
innovative quality products, the company of firsts, Sony website. These entire factors
drive the high price for Sony quality products.
2. Discounts
Discounts are based on a corporate decision or the store that runs a sales promotion on
the Sony Discounts are offered sometimes during the peak seasons like Christmas,
Sports seasons, and seasonal discounts are provided as well. When competition is
heavily involved, such as around Black Friday, Christmas, etc., these promotional
discounts are a “steal.”
3. Advertizing:
Sony Electronics advertizes through direct mail, TV advertisements, newspapers,
magazines i.e.: Business week, Times, Wall-Mart, Best Buy, Target, and leading news
papers worldwide.
4. Customer relationship management (CRM)
Sony is strong believer in communication with customers through personal interaction.
Market research and marketeering strategy is based on feedback from customers. Sony
provides opportunity to its customers to send feedback about the products they
purchased. Sony offers instruction manuals on all products. Marketing is not an event
but an ongoing process, Sony uses customer feedback to improve their products. Sony
welcomes complains, suggestions and ideas from customers and all the information
received through feedback is sent to planning and design group.
5. Public relations:
PR department of Sony Corporation works directly with the executive team to create
strong relationship with public. This creates people to be more customers based and
involved with customers and their interest, likes dislikes and needs.
6. Web marketing:
Web marketing is the most dominate feature of Sony. It offers different Videos and pdf
brochures to help customers understand their business and products. There is Sony a
reward program which offers credit card and opportunities to win prizes and save on
Sony products, participates in entertainment games and earns additional points.

Place/Location
Geographically, Sony produces and distributes to places all over the world.

E- Business:
Sony’s objective is to construct strong customer relationship marketing and direct
communication with their customers. To achieve this target Sony has incorporated e-
business. Today Sony communicates with its customers, individuals, resellers, and
corporate customers through the internet. This technology has created an open
communication line between customers and stores, stores and corporate and also
between stores and suppliers. Sony is looking forward to capturing the voices of every
customer for better customer satisfaction and effective communicate with them.
On the corporate level, Sony uses the internet to keep track of all its stores and their
performance.
Customers can go on Sony website online and do anything from information on
products to purchasing or products and downloading drivers for Sony products.
Resell stores have access to corporate entities through email and Sony’s website where
they can upload information on their financial situation and also compare sell of
different items.
Building Customer Relationship:
Marketers at Sony corporation have found a new way to with customers, i.e.: online
courses to enhance customer’s total Sony experience. The online tutorials provide
courses to online visitors in personal computing, home entertainment, digital
photography and business solutions.
The result of online tutorials had been outstanding; Sony has received more than 90%
rating from its customers. Those who attend the course were more likely to buy the
products as compared to those who have never attended course.

Sony E- Commerce program

Sony Electronic started an e-Commerce program to create a customizable world class
internet platform for direct sales of electronic and its solutions.
The project’s focus was to increase direct sales in new and established markets and
establish the customer relationship at all points of the customer life cycle. Markets,
Business-business (B2B), and business- consumer (B2C) was targeted.
With this e-Commerce program Sony Electronics got new direction and 60% of their
direct sales are online. With the help this program Sony Electronics reacted into new
segments in a number of markets from small to large business, governments, and
education.
The credit of the success of this program goes to Catapult System that helped Sony
Corporation to complete this very important goal in efficient and timely manner. The
success of this program allows Sony to move with great confidence in e-Commerce
solution that fully meets with technical requirements of company

A) Information in marketing strategy

Sony has succeeded in proving value information to its customers through tutorial vide
steams and through e-support to the customers who buy Sony products.Sony’s online
course has been valuable source of formation regarding technology and its use.Sony is
also active in participating community awareness through its different social programs.
With the support of e-business and effective management of CRM, Sony have provided
valuable information and has received constructive feedback from its customers.
B) Sony’s defines business strategy for year 2010
Sony has been leader in innovative quality products and by the end of this year Sony will
launch 3D Television. Sony has reformed its organizational structured as desired in 2009.
The aim for 2010 is to bolster profitability and transform its operation s with the aim of
accelerating innovation and growth and optimize business process in electronics. Sony
achieved 80% of its targeted 330 Billion Yen (3.7 billion $) cost reduction for past fiscal
year ending March, 2010. Sony is positioned to launch succession of competitive
products by the end of 2010.
Sony will focus on use experience rather than developing products on underlying
technologies. For further growth and to enhance profitability, Sony is implementing
further transforming measures on following four initiatives. Target profitability in core
hardware business i.e.: TV, games, digital imaging
 Provide new use experiences in innovation of services and hardware
 Reach out new customers and develop new geographic markets
 Increase focus on environmentally conscious products and processes
 Green management 2015 will come into effect in fiscal year 20100 and Sony will
disclose its progress periodically.
 Sony target an annual 5% operating income margin and 10% return on equity by
the end of fiscal year end ding March, 2010.

C) Global context in marketing strategy

Sony’s Global Strategies
The vision of globalization is traced back when Mr. Morita travelled to US with the
intention to expand his business to US market. Sony, in 1958, developed pocket radio
“Sony” after acquiring licensing right of patent from AT & T .The Sony Radio became the
first model that was distributed both in Japan and US markets. After that company
established Sony Corporation of America an opened Sony showroom in New York City.
This can be considered as Sony’s first move in doing global strategy. Presently, Sony is
world’s most recognized Brand (Richard A, 2002). Sony develops the global strategies
from its core strategic advantages, which are innovation. By virtue of this core strategic
advantages Sony adopted it as their global strategy by supplying innovative quality
products to global market.
The innovative products are Walkman (personal stereo headphone) DVD Player, Video
camera, Trinitron televisions, play stations. All such products became more and more
recognized worldwide including Japans, Europe, US and Other Asian countries.
Sony first started its show room s in New York and then in UK, Switzerland, Netherlands,
France, and worldwide.
Other global strategies that enable Sony to progress in global competitions are the
choice of the location, global marketing and competitive move. Innovative quality
products, strand brand and worldwide presence have made Sony a truly global
company.
Global context in Sony’s marketing strategy: Sony offers same products in different
countries to serve the similar needs of worldwide consumers. This successful strategy
has derived from the strengths of Sony over competitors in terms of anticipating hidden
consumer needs such as Walkman served worldwide consumers for entertainment. This
puts the Sony one step ahead over their competitors. As a consequence of global
availability and serviceability of Sony, it has global recognition, which enable Sony to be
familiar in every country and as a result customers feel more comfortable.

D) e-Business in marketing strategy

E- Business:
Sony’s objective is to construct strong customer relationship marketing and direct
communication with their customers. To achieve this target Sony has incorporated e-
business.
Today Sony communicates with its customers, individuals, resellers, and corporate
customers through the internet. This technology has created an open communication
line between customers and stores, stores and corporate and also between stores and
suppliers.
Sony is looking forward to capturing the voices of every customer for better customer
satisfaction and effective communicate with them.
Building Customer Relationship
Marketers at Sony corporation have found a new way to with customers, i.e.: online
courses to enhance customer’s total Sony experience. The online tutorials provide
courses to online visitors in personal computing, home entertainment, digital
photography and business solutions.
The result of online tutorials had been outstanding; Sony has received more than 90%
rating from its customers. Those who attend the course were more likely to buy the
products as compared to those who have never attended course.
Sony E- Commerce program

Sony Electronic started an e-Commerce program to create a customizable world class

internet platform for direct sales of electronic and its solutions.
The project’s focus was to increase direct sales in new and established markets and
establish the customer relationship at all points of the customer life cycle. Markets,
Business-business (B2B), and business- consumer (B2C) was targeted.
With this e-Commerce program Sony Electronics got new direction and 60% of their
direct sales are online. With the help this program Sony Electronics reacted into new
segments in a number of markets from small to large business, governments, and
education.
The credit of the success of this program goes to Catapult System that helped Sony
Corporation to complete this very important goal in efficient and timely manner. The
success of this program allows Sony to move with great confidence in e-Commerce
solution that fully meets with technical requirements of company