Case Study : At Sony, Our Mission Essay

He talks about regular conversations with Kunitake Ando who is the president of Sony. Ando regularly talks about inventing new products even if they only last for a short time. From there the author goes on to talk about inventing new ways to market a product:

Japan is the home to of the top companies in the world. One of the companies, which has helped Japan’s economy to be one of the top, is Sony. Modern day Sony is a high profit high output company, which is manly due to its marketing strategies and decision to its customers.

Sony Corporation is a Japanese owned company, created in 1946 based in Tokyo, Japan. The company competes in the technology market with diversity. This includes video games, computers and computer hardware, television, media players, etc. With that being said, Sony has had their ups and downs over the past few years, just like everyone else in this industry. Things such as the U.S. economy can really affect the future of this company. Now that the economy is on the downfall, things such as entertainment are not as important as paying for food, gas, and other bills. It is important to realize these things as you analyze the company due to the fact that the company

Sony have been known worldwide as a Japanese multinational company, its efforts trying to expanding business in United States, have made that Sony acquires CBS Records and Columbia Pictures. Thus, creating Sony Music and Sony Pictures, which represent Sony entertainment. This involved to the company in $1.2 billion of debt, and assigned goodwill assets for $3.8 billion.

* Identification of the strategic goals of both the SBU and the parent company, Sony, and reevaluating goals as the market or technologies shift, or as Sony adjusts its corporate strategies;

Sony must reposition its “growth driven” and “stable profit generator” sectors in their markets to increase its audience, achieve sales growth, profit expansion and maximization, and capture market shares.

“To become a leading global provider of networked consumer electronics, entertainment and services.” That’s the mission of Sony, producer of the Sony Playstation. Sony, information and

Sony’s innovative approach and successful brand name, being associated with numerous motion pictures, computer entertainment, music, television, and online businesses, makes Sony one of the most successful, extensive entertainment and technology companies in the world.

Sony's marketing strategy was to make use of its worldwide network of captive commercial video distributors which in turn worked with more than 1,500 dealers across the globe. Also Sony's strategy was to make use of brand name recognition which had a reputation of reliability and low price among dealers. Sony also took advantage of the fact that Barco was purchasing tubes from Sony Components. In some cases Sony's strategy was to be better off than Barco in terms of latest developments related to tubes with in-house supplier. Internal efficiencies were created from Sony Components – Sony projectors would know about new tubes before competitors and thus be able to design for new tubes immediately. This resulted in supply chain efficiencies of being more responsive to demand, and not carrying high inventories.

Back in 2002, Sony geared themselves toward a vertical strategy as reported by Rob Weisenthal, VP and CFO of Sony Corp. of America, “Under the USA umbrella, we undertook a number of vertical initiatives for each operating division. These have already produced significant operational streamlining and financial performance improvements.” As discussed in his release, Weisenthal talked about Sony Pictures Entertainment and their strategy to restructure television operations, where core programming competencies were focused on. Film and television digitalization efforts have been expanded and have engineered a significant reduction in their corporate overhead. In addition, he mentionted that Sony Music has made long

In addition to the opportunity that Sony has to take advantage of the networking aspect, Sony must continue to work on their brand name. Sony’s brand name has become less powerful in the recent years and is partially due to the very wide range of product offerings that spread Sony thin. Since they offer so many products, it is difficult to concentrate and make each of those products the best in the market. According to Rick Giusto, “The Sony name just isn’t the same as it even was five years ago. It used to be that Sony

Sony has many products and started to branch out. Sony has mostly started to manufacture appliances and electronics. Even thou many new different products may arise, Sony can manage and maintain their quality.

Hirai has made Sony’s strategic development process somewhat deliberate. He has laid out how he wants to see Sony change. Sony is teetering on the edge of the deliberate side on the pendulum of organisational context. Moreover, Hirai believes that Sony are in a relatively stable environment, or at least, understand the direction which the environment is headed. Moreover, Sony does consistently show glimmers of a potentially emergent side. They are open to adaptation and change, but remain to plan in a deliberate method.

Due to the rise in competition, Sony has to keep on innovating in order to keep attracting

“…But Sony’s culture is a mix of very Japanese thinking and not very Japanese thinking.  In a sense we are very free.  We are not forced to do anything as long as we are doing a good job.  You really have freedom in Sony.  If you’re innovative, you are given new opportunities.  Some people who may not really be suited for anything in other companies can still survive in Sony.  They will be given an opportunity to try to realize their dream. … (Beamish 2000)”