Marketing Strategy of Sony Corporation

Introduction

The essay intends to discuss why it is necessary to understand competitors and how understanding of competitors can help successful planning of marketing activities. The essay intends to determine the importance of strategic marketing planning and its need of understanding a company’s rival. Through the essay a better understanding of strategic marketing planning, and the need to know competitors will be made. 

 

Background of the company

Sony Corporation is a Japanese electronics manufacturer, with headquarters in Tokyo. Sony designs, manufactures, and sells electronic equipment. It is a leader in the development of consumer electronics goods, such as videocassette recorders, cellular and cordless telephones, compact disc equipment, and television systems. Sony also manufactures computers and related devices ( 2003). Sony actively encourages innovation by its employees. Design engineers are given budgets and time for innovation and experimentation. The company holds an annual contest in which engineers show off their prototypes; bonuses are awarded to those whose prototypes are selected for eventual manufacture and marketing. Sony continually makes and offers new products, most of which are tested in the Japanese market. Sony has been particularly successful in the United States market; however, it is outsold in Japan and elsewhere by Matsushita, another Japanese electronics giant ( 2003, ).

Body of the content

Management of a firm needs strategy, to make sure that everything goes well in the company, through the use of strategic management everything done in the company is well organized and no detail is being left out. The company needs strategic management to make sure that the company is doing well internally. The term strategic management originates from the Greek language, where the word means the art of a general. The person who makes strategies is the strategist who is the leader of an army ( 1991).Strategic management decisions have multifunctional and multi-business consequences, this kind of decision require broad consideration of the firm's external and internal environments, and it may affect the firm’s chance of prosperity. It is important to know what strategy is about, what can it do help the company prosper, what will happen if not used properly, what are the advantages and disadvantages of having a strategy. Strategy is a plan that assimilates the company’s major target; policies and rules; decisions and sequences of action into organized whole. It can apply at all levels of organization and pertain to any of the functional areas of management ( 2000). Strategy is plagued by a stigma of unsystematic reasoning (1988). It is incomplete search for strategic alternatives, and bounded rationality ( 1960) influenced this perception. Strategy is a combination of the company’s objectives, policies and decisions to be done in unison or contingent upon each other. Marketing strategy thus refers to how a company’s products or services its trade is presented to consumers in an effective manner as to gain loyal costumers. Strategy can be used in different ways, one of which is through marketing. Using strategy in marketing makes it more convincing and effective. Strategy makes sure that nothing wrong happens in the marketing process in the company. Marketing strategy is a way to capture a niche in the consumer market. Businesses utilize it to gain following and exploit their maximum and/or optimal profit capabilities.  Strategic marketing is the way company sells the product it has with less difficulty and more readiness to face competitors. Strategic marketing makes sure that the company uses all of its resources to counter its competitors. Strategic marketing planning is a procedure wherein the strategies used to sell product is carefully studied and analyzed so that the company can compete well and have advantage with rivals.

 

Corporate vs. competitors

            All firms have strategic windows and some of these windows open out on to markets that are shared with other firms. Where windows share views over the same market, competition exists. It is important to understand how different firms view the same market since their perceived and actual windows of opportunity will not all be the same. The nature of competition and the factors which influence it are explored along with how firms identify competitors and how they use product positioning to obtain a competitive advantage. Attention is paid to how firms define their marketing strategies and analyze the competitive positions of rivals ( 2000).Consideration is given to the various sources of information available to firms that enable them to gauge competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Success in the market place depends not only on an ability to identify customer wants and needs but also upon an ability to be able to satisfy those wants and needs better than competitors are able to do. This implies that organizations need to look for ways of achieving a differential advantage in the eyes of the customer. The differential advantage is often achieved through the product or service itself but sometimes it may be achieved through other elements of the marketing mix (2000). An important thing the company should be wary of is to understand competitors. Gaining knowledge against competitors helps in creating measures to gain advantage against competitors.  To know and have an in depth knowledge of the competitors the company can use different kinds of strategy such as porter’s generic strategy.  Determining and having added knowledge about the competitors help in planning marketing activities through distinguishing and forecasting what activities rivals may use and what strategy they might implement. Having added knowledge creates a way for the company to prepare for anything competitors might do and it helps in planning marketing activities that focus on having contingency measures against competitors.

 

Sony although already a well known and successful company still uses strategic marketing planning that keeps the company alive in its industry. This strategic marketing planning keeps Sony alive against its competitors. Sony should still know and acquire all information they can with regards their competitors. The competitor’s activities, background and actions should be known by the company so that in planning marketing activities they know which things will be done by the competitors, what kind of actions the competitors will do in certain situations, and what future things the competitors might do. Sony should not be complacent with the things they know about the competitors. They should strive to find out things about the competitors that cannot be visibly noticed. Through the use of certain strategies like porter’s generic strategy the company might be able to know more about competitors and through such information they can plan strategies to conquer this competitors.