CASE: IV 

IIBMS – SONY

IIBMS – SONY : In just over half-century

In just over half-century, Sony Corporation has from a 10-person engineering research group operating out of a bombed-out department store to one of the largest, most complex, and best-known companies in the world. Sony co-founders Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita met while serving on Japan’s Wartime Research Committee during World War II. After the war, in 1946, the pair got back together and formed Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation to repair radios and build shortwave radio adapters. The first breakthrough product came in 1950, when the company produced Japan’s first tape recorder, which proved very popular in music schools and in courtrooms as a replacement for stenographers.

In 1953, Morita came to the United States and signed an agreement to gain access to Western Electric’s patent for the transistor. Although Western Electric (Bell Laboratory’s parent company) suggested Morita and Ibuka use the transistor to make hearing aids, they decided instead to use it in radios. In 1955, Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation marketed the TR-55, Japan’s first transistor radio, and the rest, as they say, is history. Soon thereafter, Morita rechristened the company as Sony, a name he felt conveyed youthful energy and could be easily recognized outside Japan.

            Today Sony is almost everywhere. Its businesses include electronics, computer equipment, music, movies, games, and even life insurance. It employs 190,000 people worldwide and does business on six continents. In 1999, Sony racked up sales of $63 billion; 31 percent of those came from Japan, 30 percent from the United States, and 22 percent from Europe. (To visit some of Sony’s country-specific websites, go to www.sony.com and click on “Global Sites.”)

Perhaps Sony’s most famous product is the Walkman. Created in 1979, the Walkman capitalized on what some perceived as the start of a global trend towards individualism. From a technological standpoint, the Walkman, was fairly unspectacular, even by 1979 standards, but Sony’s marketing efforts successfully focused on the freedom and independence the Walkman provided. One ad depicted three pairs of shoes sitting next to a Walkman with the tag line “Why man learned to walk.” By 2000 more than 250 million Walkmans had been sold worldwide, but Sony was concerned. Studies had shown that Generation Y (ages 14 to 24) viewed the Walkman as stodgy and outdated. So Sony launched a $30 million advertising and marketing campaign to reposition the product in the United States. The star of the new ads was Plato, a cool, Walkman-wearing space creature. The choice of a nonhuman character was no accident according to Ron Boire, head of Sony’s U.S. personal-mobile group. He wanted a character that would appeal to the broadest possible range of ethnic groups—thus, the space creature. Boire explains, “An alien is no one, so an alien is everyone.”

Sony’s current vision, however, extends far beyond the Walkman: to become a leader in broadband technologies. Sony looks forward to a day when all of its products—televisions, DVDs, telephones, game machines, computers, and so on—can communicate with one another and connect with the Web on a persona network. A Sony executive provides an example of such technology in action: “Say you are watching TV in the den, and your kids are playing their music way too loud upstairs,” he says. “You could use your TV remote to call up an onscreen control panel that would let you turn down your kids’ stereo, all without having to get up from your recliner.”

Sony sees its new PlayStation2 filling a major role in the Internet of the future. In March 2000, Sony introduced the PlayStation2 in Japan and sold 1 million units within a week. Newsweek featured the PlayStation2 on its cover that spring, even though it wasn’t offered in the United States until later in the year. Most consumers probably bought PlayStation2 to play video games, but its potential goes far beyond that. It is actually powerful enough to be adapted to guide a ballistic missile. Sony envisions consumers turning to the PlayStation2 for not only games but also movies, music, online shopping, and any other kind of digital entertainment currently imaginable. Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment, predicts the PlayStation2 will someday become as valuable as the PC is today: “A lot of people always assumed the PC would be the machine to control your home network. But the PC is a narrowband device that… has been retrofitted to play videogames and interactive 3-D graphics. The PlayStation2 is designed from the ground up to be a broadband device.”

The PlayStation2 also reflects a changing attitude within Sony regarding partnerships with other companies. Toshiba helped Sony design the Emotion Engine, which powers the PlayStation2. In previous years, these kinds of alliances were the exception rather than the rule with the Sony. Sony was perceived as arrogant because it rarely cooperated with other companies, preferring to develop and popularize new technologies on its own. Recently, however, that has changed. Sony has worked with U.S. based Palm to develop a new hand-held organizer with multimedia capabilities, cooperated with Intel to create a set of standards for home networks, and launched a joint venture with Cablevision to build a broadband network in the New York metropolitan area. Nevertheless, some critics believe Sony remains too insular, looking on from the sidelines while other companies join forces to create entertainment powerhouses. Sony has no alliances with U.S. cable or television networks, raising some doubts about its ability to fully develop its home Internet services. Sony has talked with other music companies about possible joint venture, but nothing has come to fruition.

Unlike many U.S.-based multinationals, Tokyo-based Sony traditionally has marketed itself on a regional rather than a global basis. For example, Sony has almost 50 different country-specific websites from which consumers can order products. However, there are signs that strategy may be changing, at least to some degree. Sony launched www.Sonystyle.com, a website that is the company’s primary online outlet for selling movies, music, and electronic products. Sony also plans to provide product service and support on the site, and eventually software upgrades as well. The current main website (www.sony.com) is mainly a source for corporate and investor information. Also, in 1997 Sony embarked on a worldwide ad campaign to make itself and its products more relevant in the eyes of younger consumers. Ironically, much of Sony’s future growth may come from its own backyard. The primary buyers of electronic and digital products are ages 15 to 40. It is estimated that by 2010, two-thirds of the people in the world in that age bracket will live in Asia. Tokyo is already a powerful influence on Asian culture. Asia’s most popular youth magazines are published in Tokyo, and most of the music Asian young people listen to comes form Tokyo. So part of Sony’s challenge is to continue to grow on a global scale while paying close attention to the burgeoning market at home.

Immediately following World War II and for some years thereafter, the label “Made in Japan” connoted cheap, shoddy, imitation products. Today, for many people, that same label stands for excellence and innovation. Certainly Sony can take much of the credit that transformation. Now the question is whether Sony’s products and marketing efforts can keep pace (or set the pace) in the upcoming age of digital convergence.

Question:

 

1. Identify and discuss some of the cultural meanings for Sony possessed by consumers in your country. Discuss how these cultural meaning were developed and how they influence consumers’ behaviors (and affect and cognition). What is the role of marketing strategies in creating and maintaining (or modifying) these cultural meanings?
2. It is often stated that the world is becoming smaller because today people communicate relatively easily across time and distance. Discuss whether that has been beneficial for Sony. What are some marketing challenges it presents?
3. What do you think about Sony’s tradition of region-specific or nation-specific marketing? Would Sony be better served by working to create a more uniform global image?

IIBMS – SONY : In just over half-century

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