Sony. Like no other.
SONY Products
The first market mix element is Product. A product is anything that can beoffered to a market for attention, acquisition, use or consumption that mightsatisfy a need or want.Product decision normally base on brand name, Functionality, Styling,Quality, Safety, Packaging, Repairs and Support, Warranty, accessories andServices. These product attributes can be manipulated depending on what thetarget market wants. Also, customers always look for new and improved things,which is why marketers should improve existing products, develop new ones,and discontinue old ones that are no longer needed or wanted by the customer.Sony has a variety of products ranging from electronic devices, gamesand entertainment. So, briefly Sony products can be categorized in the followingmajor product categories:i.Television and Projectors.ii.Home video.iii.Home Audio.iv.Home Theatre system.v.Digital Photography.vi.Hand cam video camera.vii.Computer Peripheral.viii.Portable Audio.ix.Game.x.In-Car entertainment.xi.Mobile phones.xii.Storage and Recording media.xiii.Batteries and Charger.xiv.Other Accessories.
A. Television and Projectors
In the category of television and projector, Sony has further subdivided itsproducts in different models, style and performance. In this category we haveseveral other sub categories and designs which are:
i.
Bravia LCD TV.
ii.
CRT TV.iii.Home theatre projector iv.Business Projector.v.Public Display Panel.As it can be seen above, Sony has tried to cover many areas where theneed of displaying devices are of great need. For example here we can see thatSony has tried to fulfill the demand of displaying devices from the hometelevision sets, Office projectors and Public display panels to cover differentneeds and the size of the people in need of those displaying devices.
B. Home Video
In this category, Sony has tried to bring in new format so as to dominate themarket, for example the emerging data storage format called Blue- ray has beenlaunched along with the devices which can be used to run such a latest storagetechnology. In these category, Sony has included home video systems andaccessories which can enable the user to record various favorite TV programs.These products include:i.Blue-ray disc player.ii.DVD player.iii.DVD portable player.
C. Home Audio
Depending on the customer needs, usage and budgets, Sony has providedseveral home products ranging from small packages to big audio systems. Theyboast on their Hi-Fi which deliver rich music, made richer with preset equalizer settings. Among other features which Sony boast to offer are like, multiple discchangers which for putting many discs at a go. Also, Some even house additionalfeatures such as the ability to handle multiple formats, track programming andrepeat and random play. The home audio products categorized by Sony are:i.Hi-Fi Systems.
ii.
Home audio accessories. E.g. Digital media port.
D. Home Theatre System
Sony has tried to combine the latest video and audio technologies. Sonyhas developed a series of Home Theatre Systems that provides customers withan enhanced home theatre experience, eg. Surround sound environment anddedicated audio input for connecting portable digital music players.In this category, Sony has categorized the products as:i.DVD Home Theatre Systemii.Home Theatre Component Systemiii.Home Theatre System Accessories
E. Digital Photography
In terms of digital photography, Sony has produced a variety of imagingdevices depending on the users and their professions. For example for a casualuser or girls there are slim camera which can be easy to carry or put on thepurse. For real photograph enthusiast and professionals there are moresophisticated cameras with advanced features like digital SLR camera. And alsothey have produced photo printers and frames.The sub-categories in digital photography which Sony offers include:i.Digital SLRii.Cybershot Digital Cameraiii.Digital Photo Printer iv.Digital Photo Frame.
F. Handy Cam Video Camera
Sony has produced a variety of video camera for home and office use. Avariety of these handy cam video camera are easy to use as from producingfamily video, documentary filming and developing feature films.The subcategories of these hand cam video camera produced by Sony are asfollows:i.Handycam high definition video Cameraii.Handycam Standard Definition Video Cameraiii.Handycam Accessoriesiv.Digital Photo Printer v.Digital Photo Frame
G. Computer and Peripherals
Combining form, function and the latest in technology, Sony provides arange of IT and computing devices. In case of the computer devices Sony hasproduced a variety of laptops with different price ranges and performance tomeet the demands of the users like home users, students and businessmen.The sub-categories of these are:i.VAIO laptops and computersii.VAIO accessoriesiii.Business Projectorsiv.Memory Stick
H. Portable Audio
Sony has produced a lot of various varieties of portable audio whose maintarget are the youth of the new generation.The sub-categories of these portable audio produced by Sony are:i.Walkman mp3 seriesii.CD Walkman seriesiii.CD/Radio/Cassette player iv.Radiov.Voice recorder vi.Audio Accessories
I. Games
Sony offers games of all genres to match customers gaming preference.Also, Sony has produced Powerful consoles which are accompanied withcompelling games. These games produced by Sony includes:i.Playstation 3ii.Playstation 2iii.PSP (Playstation Portable)
J. Mobile Phones
With Sony Ericsson, Sony has produced a variety of mobile phones for different people, lifestyle, usage, budget and profession. Also a series of mobilephone accessories have been produced by Sony so that customer can spruce uptheir mobile phone’s appearance, prevent them from damage, or enhance their usage.Among the subcategories are:i.Phonesii.Phone Accessories.
K. In-Car Entertainment
Different in-car entertainment products have been produced by Sony.Apart from the normal car radio and CD changer devices, Sony has producedmore entertaining devices to view different media like video and television.Among the products subcategorized in this category are as follows:i.Xplod CD receiver ii.Xplod in car visualiii.Xplod Cassette receiver iv.Xplod Amplifier v.Xplod Speaker/Subwoofer
L. Storage and Recording Media
Sony has developed a range of reliable storage and recording media thatcustomers can depend on for recording, transferring or storing their information.These products ranges from those devices which can be used to store smallamount of data for transfer and those media to store a large amount of datapermanently.The sub- categories of these products include:i.Memory Stickii.USB storage mediaiii.Data storage mediaiv.Video Storage mediav.Audio mediavi.Storage mediavii.Professional media
M. Battery and Charger
Sony has a range of batteries that are long-lasting and offer maximum power for optimum performance, making sure that the customer will never be lefthanging during the most crucial time.
SONY Promotion
Brief Introduction:
Promotion is a key element of marketing program and is concerned witheffectively and efficiently communicating the decisions of marketing strategy, tofavorably influence target customers’ perceptions to facilitate exchange betweenthe marketer and the customer that may satisfy the objective of both customer and the company.A company’s promotional efforts are the only controllable means to createawareness among publics about itself, the products and services it offers , their features and influence their attitudes favorably.
Sony Marketing Communication Mix:
Sony India will spend Rs 200 crore in this financial year on advertising andpromotion (Promotional Budget) of the entire range of consumer electronics, outof which Rs 60 crore will be spent only on digital imaging products.
The major elements of promotion mix include advertising, personal selling,sales promotion, direct marketing, and publicity. Sony Corporation has used all of these marketing communication mix elements.
Advertising
Advertising is any paid form of non-personal mass communication through various media to present and promote product, services and ideas etc.by an identified sponsor. So far, SONY has advertised its products through many different waysand media. Through TV we have seen different advertisements of its productssuch as Bravia televisions or Sony wega TV. Sony also advertise its products bytargeting those favorable television programs, like sports, series and also it hasits own channel called Sony TV channel. Sony uses some events like Miss India2008 to promote its products.Also, Sony has advertised its games like Playstation 3, Playstation 2and PSP using sports like football in England premiere league.Through newspapers like Times of India, Sony has advertised a widerange of products it offers to its customers. And also through Posters a messagehas been sent to a lot of people to be aware of the products which Sony offers.
Sony also uses
direct – response advertising
. This is type of advertising that encourages the consumer to respond either by providing feedback to theadvertiser or placing the order with the advertiser either by telephone, mail or theinternet. Such advertising is done through direct mail or catalogues.Sony incorporates
co-operative advertising
in its advertising process.Sony corporation provides the dealers (e.g. Sony World) with the materials andguidelines to develop ads for print, television or radio commercials. This ensuresthat message is in line with, what the manufacture wants to communicate. Thecompany and the dealers usually share the media costs and hence, the name‘co-operative advertising’.
Sales Promotion
Sales promotion is a marketing discipline that utilizes a variety of incentives techniques to structure sales – related programs targeted tocustomers, trade, and/or sales levels that generate a specific, measurable actionor response for a product or service.Sales promotions for example includes free samples, discount, rebates,coupons, contents and sweepstakes, premiums, scratch cards, exchange offers,early bird prizes, etc.Sony has promoted its products through different sales promotionalstrategies. For example after the release of the Sony BRAVIA television sets,Sony promoted them by earl bird prizes by saying that all BRAVIA full HD LCDTVs purchased during July 2008 and registered within two weeks of purchasequalify for a Bonus Playstation 3 as long as the customer claims is one of the first35,000 received and validated by Sony.Also Sony has promoted its Sony Ericsson P1i phones by including a scratchcards which gives the customer the offer to download 10 free softwareapplication for that mobile phone.Sony Ericsson has also promoted its Sony Ericsson K550i Mid-RangeCyber-shot Phone that if you buy it you get a free Bluetooth headset with oneyear manufacturer’s warranty.
Public Relations and Publicity
Public relations is a broad set of communication activities employed tocreate and maintain favourable relationship with employees, shareholders,
suppliers, media, educators, potential investors, financial institutions, governmentagencies and officials and society in general.Through its website, Sony corporation has its provided contacts for thosecustomers who will be in need of any information from the company. In this waySony can create a mutual relationship with its customers and ensure that itserves the wishes and demands of its customers.Unpleasant situations arising as a result of negative events may precipitateunfavorable public reactions for an organization. To minimize the negative effectof such situations leading to unfavorable coverage, the company has policies andprocedures in place to manage help any such public relation problems. For example, Sony released an ad depicting a man smiling towards thecamera and wearing on his head a crown of thorns with button symbols (Δ, O, X,□). At the bottom, the copy read as "Ten Years of Passion". This supposedly tookadvantage of the publicity from the Mel Gibson film
The Passion of the Christ
.The advertisement outraged the Vatican as well as many local Catholics,prompting comments such as "Sony went too far" and "Vatican ex-communicatesSony". After the incident, the campaign was quickly discontinued.Another example is that, In July 2006, Sony released a Dutch advertisingcampaign featuring a white model dressed entirely in white and a black modelgarbed in black. The first ad featured the white model clutching the face of theblack model. The words "White is coming" headlined one of the ads. The ad hasbeen viewed as racist by critics. A Sony spokesperson responded that the addoes not have a racist message, saying that it was only trying to depict thecontrast between the black PSP model and the new ceramic white PSP. Other pictures of the ad campaign include the black model overpowering the whitemodel.So it’s the duty of the public relation department of Sony to solve such issuesas mentioned above so as to ensure that it maintains a good public relation withthe public.
SONY Place (Distribution)
MANUFACTURER RETAILER CUSTOMER
Decisions with respect to distribution channel focus on making the productavailable in adequate quantities at places where customers are normallyexpected to shop for them to satisfy their needs. Depending on the nature of theproduct, marketing management decides to put into place an exclusive, selectiveor intensive network of distribution, while selecting the appropriate dealers or wholesalers.
Sony being the company which positions itself as a seller of durable andhigh-end products, it is practicing
selective distribution
of its products from theselective dealers i.e. SONY World. Apart from this there are
grey-markets
inIndia and other countries where a practice of
intensive market coverage
ispracticed, and the products in these kind of markets normally do not posses allthe features and benefits which Sony offers e.g. warranty and guarantee.Sony distributes its products in various channels. It uses Zero-levelchannel, one level channel and two-level channel. In India, Sony has used the method of
one-level
distribution channel.This means that, customer buy their Sony product from the retailers recognizedby Sony, and these retailers buy the products directly from the company itself.i.e.
20
Through the internet, Sony has helped its customers to find the nearestretail shop where they can buy the Sony products. All you have to do is to go totheir website e.g. www.sony.co.in/section/shop and specify the product andlocation. Then it will display all the nearest retail shop available.
SONY Price
Pricing decisions are almost always made in consultation with marketingmanagement. Price is the only marketing mix variable that can be altered quickly.Price variables such as dealer price, retail price, discounts, allowances, creditterms etc. influence the development of marketing strategy, as price is a major factor that influences the assessment of value obtained by customers.Customers directly relate price to quality, particularly in case of productsthat are ego intensive of technology based. Sony being a company whichemphasize product quality, it tends to sell its products with price range frommoderately-high to high-prices, depending on the use and the targetedcustomers.For example, Lets consider Sony series of VAIO laptops. Sony has tried tocategorize the laptops according to style, user, purpose, mobility andperformance, and each a corresponding price.The laptops sold by Sony in India include a series of Sony VAIO, this areVAIO SR, VAIO FW, VAIO tokage, VAIO CR, VAIO NR, VAIO TZ and VAIO SZ. VAIO SR, boast on the excellence in mobility and perfection inperformance. This laptop was designed for businessmen and its price is aroundRs. 75,000/-VAIO FW, boast of theatrical experience and world class performance. Thismodel was designed mainly for home user or casual user of laptops who aims onmedia playback. The price of it is around Rs. 80,000 and Rs.1,25,000.VAIO CR, boast on style and texture. Depending on the configuration, theprices are from Rs. 40,000 to Rs. 65,000.. VAIO NR, boast of natural, chic design. It was designed to meet customersambiance and lifestyle. For this reason the Sony corporation has decided theprice of the laptop to be Rs. 40,000 and Rs. 50,000 depending on theconfiguration.VAIO TZ, boast of elite lifestyle, and high class performance. The laptopwas designed purposely for business as it is light weight, high processing speed,and flash memory storage and longer backup power. For all this facts Sony haspriced it to be between Rs. 1,15,000 and Rs. 1,40,000.VAIO SZ, boast of premier mobility and executive excellence. This laptopwas developed by Sony to target executives and business people who aremobile. The laptop is fitted with hybrid hard disk drive and motion eye cameraand Bluetooth compatible headset with applications for increasing mobility andvideo conferencing. It’s price is about Rs. 1,24,000.
Discussion On The CurrentMarketing Mix
In my opinion, I think the current marketing mix which Sony Corporation hasis satisfactory to customer needs. As it can be Cleary seen that Sony as acompany has expanded its products and services from electronic and digitaldevices to television broadcasting(i.e. Sony home entertainment) andentertainments like music (i.e. Sony BMG music entertainment) and movieproduction and distribution (i.e. Sony Picture).In providing a wide range of
products and services
with high quality, Sonyhas by far influenced most of the its customers perception favorably towards itsproducts. From time the company was created till now, the quality of theproducts that Sony offers is improving each year, although there are someoccurrence of defects like that of defect on laptop batteries which were sold andgot exploded and caught fire in Japan has caused the company a great loss as ithad to recall a million of those defected batters, and also this issue degraded thecompany’s reputation. But the overall products offered by Sony to my opinion willstill be of best quality.Even though the
prices
imposed by Sony seems to be fair withconsideration of the quality of the products and services offered , The onlyproblem is that, Sony has
priced
its products too expensively for a middle or lower class customer to afford to buy those products. Apart from that Sony hastargeted its market mainly to urban customers as are the only customers whocan afford such expensive products. In my opinion, I think Sony has to createalso some of low end products with low prices which can be affordable to lowincome users.As I have mentioned above, In the case of place (distribution), Sony hastargeted its markets in the urban areas, in big cities like New Delhi, Pune,Mumbai etc. In most of all this places, Sony has more than four differentdistributors like Sony world and also they have Sony service centers. So, For thecustomers in urban areas the supply seem to be satisfactory, though the ruralareas are left out.
Conclusion
Bibliography
Sony Laptop Catalogue, August 2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Entertainment_Television_(India)
http://yousigma.com/comparativeanalysis/sonycorp.html
STRENGTHS:
Sony has established a mature supplier management system.20
They select suppliers that comply with laws, maintain solid financials, innovate technologically, protect the environment, offer competitive prices and control component qualities.
They emphasize on the frequent exchange of information with suppliers via E-commerce throughout the standardized procurement process.
The company has established a broad sales network, registered in approximately 200 countries and territories.21
Sony provides good after-sales service.22
Almost all of Sony’s consumer-use products carry a warranty.
The company maintains support contracts with customers in addition to warranties.
They also maintain customer information centers in their principal markets.
Sony has a strong brand name. Their products are generally considered to have high quality and good design.ii
Sony has a number of Japanese and foreign patents, and is licensed to use a number of patents owned by others. Sony considers their overall license position beneficial to their operations. 23
ii See appendix 3 for information regarding Sony’s reputation.
iii These products include games, Mobile TV, interactive TV, VOD, etc.
WEAKNESSES:
Sony operates numerous product lines that serve too many parts of the entertainment value chain. They serve as a content provider, content aggregator, broadcaster, hardware producer, and manufacturer of “value-added products”iii. The “empire-building” strategy not only caused the company’s innovation and operation to slow down, but also impaired their competitiveness in any of the market segments they are engaged in. Further, the product lines have few connections among themselves, and therefore do not generate many network externalities or cost advantages.
The current financial results are weak, showing high liquidity risks, decreasing sales, slowly recovering profitability, low operating efficiency, underperforming stocks, and low investor confidence.
The current management team has been relatively conservative. While restructuring has frequently been implemented, it was usually done on a small scale. Strategically significant mergers and acquisitions were seldom conducted.
As Sony expanded into more segments and geographic locations, they became more sensitive to exchange rates and interest rates that are exogenous factors out of Sony’s control.
OPPORTUNITIES
Kazuo Hirai, appointed CEO of Sony in February 2012, might bring changes to the company. His expertise in computer entertainment and PlayStation might bring more focus to the firm’s product lines24.
Since Sony’s operating results are very sensitive to economic and employment
conditions, the business is likely to benefit from a recovery from the recent economic crisis.
Sony’s stock price is possibly undervalued after its decline by more than 50% in 2011, which might attract more equity investments in the firm in the near future. iv
The significant competition from Apple and Google could result in more integration within the electronics and software industry. Sony may take this opportunity to acquire more aggressively in order to drive down their manufacturing and intellectual property costs.
iv While it is difficult to argue Sony’s stock price is undervalued, we do believe most investors considered a 50% drop of price to be dramatic.
v See appendix 1 for more information on exchange rate.
THREATS:
The Great East Japan Earthquake and its aftermath may continue to adversely affect Sony’s operating results and financial condition by25:
incurring excessive restoration costs that exceed their insurance policies.
causing energy supply shortages that may lead to a reduction or suspension of production.
product quality degradation caused by using replacement components
reducing overall demand by consumers and businesses.
Sony must overcome increasingly intense competition from firms that may be more specialized or have greater resources.
Foreign exchange rate fluctuations can affect financial results because a large portion of Sony’s sales and assets (more than 75%) are denominated in currencies other than the Yen.v
Sony’s business restructuring and transformation efforts are costly and may not attain their objectives.
Increased reliance on external business partners may increase the possibility that:
Sony may incorporate defective or inferior third party components or software.
Third party components may be subject to copyright or patent infringement claims.
Sony’s operations may be affected if the external partners are subject to business or service interruption caused by accidents or bankruptcies.
When raw materials, parts and components become scarce, the cost of production rises.