MARKETING STRATEGY

SONY CORPORATION, In Brief:

Type: Public

Founded: 1946

Founder: Masaru Ibuka

Akio Morita

Headquarters: Minato, Tokyo, Japan

Area Served: Worldwide

Industry: Consumer Electronics Entertainment

Website: sony.net

The name “Sony” was created by combining “Sonus” and “Sonny”.

SONY Products:

A product is anything that can be offered to the market for attention, acquisition, use or consumption that might satisfy a need or want.

Product decision usually base on brand name, Functionality, Styling, Quality, Safety, Repairs & Support, Warranty, Accessories & Support. These product attributes can be manipulated depending on what the target market wants.

Sony has a variety of products to offer & they can be classified as follows:

1.Television & Projectors 12. Storage & recording media

2. Home video 13. Batteries & Chargers

3. Home audio 14. Other Accessories

4. Home Theatre System

5.Digital Photography

6. Hand cam video camera

7.Computer Peripheral

8. Portable Audio

9. Game

10. In-car Entertainment

11. Mobile phones

SONY MARKETING

Promotion is a key element of a marketing program. Sony's promotional efforts are the only controllable means to create awareness among public about itself, the products & services it offers, their features & influence their attitude favorably.

Sony India will spend Rs 200 crore in this financial year on advertising & promotion of the entire range of consumer electronics, out of which Rs 60 crore will we spent only on digital imaging products.

The major elements used by Sony for promotion mix include advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, direct marketing & publicity.

CURRENT MARKETING STRATEGY:

The continuous Youth Marketing Strategy aimed at capturing young consumers & enhancing an innovative brand image will also be employed through product groups, incorporating a series of out-of-box marketing campaigns to convey a unique lifestyle to consumers such as the Lets Color Strategy under which Sony makes its colour products available in all colour product groups, ranging from Bravia, Cyber shot cameras, to Walkman & VAIO laptops.

The official partnership with the 2010 FIFA World Cup Football Competition in South Africa.

Sony will be launching a nationwide sales & promotional campaign entitled “Sony Days 2009 Lets Cheer”-offering a wide range of special offers- starting from June 12 until August 2,2009.

Increasing Brand Awareness or Brand Recognition.

Good Graphical representation in the form of Billboards, Posters, Animated banners, etc.

Change from Theory P (Push Based) “Company must make” view of marketing to Theory T (Trust Based) “focussing on customer relationship”.

Other Schemes- example: Lustrous coating, custom keyboards, etc.

The other Promotion strategy is the Sony Notebook Recycle Promotion. Purchase a Sony VAIO notebook & receive free recycling for your existing notebooks.

SALES PROMOTION

Its a marketing discipline that utilizes a variety of incentive techniques to structure sales-related programs targeted to customers, trade and sales levels that generate a specific , measurable action or response for a product or service.

For ex: free samples, discount, rebates, coupons, contests, premiums, scratch cards, exchange offers, etc.

Sony has promoted its products through different sales promotion strategies. For example after the release of Sony VAIO CR laptops, Sony promoted them by saying that all Sony VAIO CR laptops purchased during July 2008 & registered within 2 weeks of purchase qualify for a Bonus carry case as long as the customer claims is one of the first 35,000 received & validated by Sony.

Sales were 1,733.2 billion yen (20,881 million U.S. dollars), an increase of 4.3% compared to the same quarter of the previous fiscal year 2009 (“year- on-year”), primarily due to an increase in sales in all segments other than Music, partially offset by unfavorable foreign exchange rates.

ADVERTISING

It is any paid form of non-personal mass communication through various media to present & promote product, services & ideas, etc by an identified sponsor.

Sony has advertisied through various forms of media:

1.Through TV we see different advertisements of its products. For ex: Bravia TV or Sony wega TV.

2. It targets those favorable television programs, like sports, series & it also has its own TV channel called Sony TV Channel.

3. Sony uses some events like Miss India 2008 to promote its products

4. It advertises its laptops using sports like football in England Premiere League.

5. Sony also uses direct-response advertising, thus encouraging the consumer to respond by providing feedback to the advertiser.This is usually done through mails & catalogues.

6.It also incorporates co-operative advetising by providing the dealers with materials guidelines to develop ads for print & radio commercials.

Public Relations & Publicity

Public relations is a broad set of communication activities employed to create & maintain favourable relationship with employees, shareholders, suppliers, media, educators, potential investors, financial institutions, government agencies & officials & society in general.

Through its website (www.sony.co.in) Sony corporation has its provided contacts for those customers who will be in need of any information from the company. This way it has created a mutual relationship with its customers & ensures that it serves the wishes & demands of its customers.

SONY PRICE

Pricing decisions are always made in consultation with the marketing management. Price is the only marketing mix that can be altered quickly. Price variables such as dealer price, retail price, discounts, allowances, etc influence the development of marketing strategy, as price is a major factor that influences the assessment of value obtained by customers.

For Sony series of VAIO laptops, Sony has tried to categorize them according to style, user, purpose, mobility& performance:

VAIO SR, boast on the excellence in mobility & perfection in performance. It is designed for businessmen & its price is around Rs76,000/-

VAIO FW, boast of theatrical experience & world class performance. This model was designed mainly for home/ casual user of laptops who aims on media playback. The price of this is around Rs 80,000 & Rs 1,20,000

VAIO CR, boast on style & texture. Depending on the configuration the prices are from Rs 40,000 to Rs 65,000...

VAIO NR, boast of natural, chic design. It was designed to meet customers ambiance & lifestyle. For this reason the Sony corporation has decided the price of the laptop to be Rs 40,000 & Rs 50,000 depending on the configuration

VAIO TZ, boast of elite lifestyle & high class performance. The laptop was designed purposely for business as it is light weight, high processing speed, flash memory storage & longer backup power. Hence it is priced between Rs 1,15,000 & Rs 1,40,000

VAIO SZ, boast of premiere mobility & executive excellence. It was developed by Sony to target executives & business people who are mobile. The laptop is fitted with

hybrid hard disk drive, motion eye camera & bluetooth compatible headset with applications for increasing mobility & video conferencing. Its price is about Rs 1,24,000

SONY PLACE(DISTRIBUTION)

Depending on the nature of the product, marketing management decides to put into place an intensive network of distribution, while selecting the appropriate dealers or wholesalers.

Sony being the company which positions itself as a seller of durable & high-end products, it is practicing selective distribution of its products from the selective dealers i.e. SONY WORLD.

Sony India has its footprint across all major town & cities with a distribution network of over 7000 channel partners, 260 Sony outlets & 21 direct branch locations.

In India, Sony has used the method of one level distribution channel.

RETAILER

CUSTOMER

PROFIT

The FINANCIAL -- Sony Corporation on October 29 announced its consolidated results for the second quarter ended September 30, 2010 (July 1, 2010 to September 30, 2010).

Consolidated operating income of 68.7 billion yen was recorded despite unfavorable foreign exchange rates, a significant improvement over the loss recorded in the same quarter of the previous fiscal year.

The Networked Products & Services segment, including the game business and PCs, contributed significantly to the improved consolidated operating results.

Progress in structural transformation initiatives resulted in improvement in the cost of sales ratio and the selling, general and administrative expenses ratio.

Forecasted operating income for the fiscal year has been revised upward, reflecting favorable second quarter performance, despite the expectation of a difficult business environment for the remainder of the fiscal year.

SWOT ANALYSIS

RECOMMENDATIONS

Exonerate

THREATCompetitior competitionGlobal economic recessionElectronic/Network securityGreening standard compliance.

S W O T A N A L Y S I S

Sony pictures Business sells decreased 11.2% during fiscal year

Financial Services Revenues declined 10.5% Operating income plummeted 73.1%

Primary focus Electronics and Gaming Research and development Alphatec/Alpha stores.

Conclusion of the Current Marketing Mix:

The current marketing mix which Sony Corporation has is satisfactory to customer needs. As it can be clearly seen that Sony as a company has expanded its products & services from electronic and digital devices to television broadcasting & entertainments like music & movie production.

In providing a wide range of products & services with high quality, Sony has by far influenced most of the consumers perception favourably towards its products.