Sony company strategy and business operations

Marketing

Sony Case Study

What have been the key success factors for Sony?

Sony believes that in order for their company to be successful they must employ three different kinds of creativity: creativity to make inventions, creativity in product planning and production, and creativity in marketing. Creativity in marketing at Sony means not just clever ads, but deep insight into its customers. Sony's marketing also includes careful measurement of each campaign's effectiveness (Kotler & Keller 2008). This creativity is what has made Sony a successful company. They manage to have this creativity across several segments of their business and then tie them all together in the end.

Where is Sony vulnerable? What should it watch out for?

Sony has been very successful over the years with its choice of what products to manufacture and market. The area were they are vulnerable is in that of their marketing. Conducting a marketing analysis includes finding out what groups of potential customers (or markets) exist, what groups of customers you prefer to serve (target markets), what their needs are, what products or services you might develop to meet their needs, how the customers might prefer to use the products and services, what your competitors are doing, what pricing you should use and how you should distribute products and services to your target markets (McNamara 2009). Where Sony needs to be careful is in making sure that they are meeting the needs of their customers. Are the products that they are producing the ones that their customers need and want to buy? They have a strategic plan on where they want to go with their next line of products, what they need to make sure of is that this is what the customers really wants. And if it is then they must have a good plan to market those products to those customers so that they end result is sales.

3. What recommendations would you make to senior marketing executives going forward? What should they be sure to do with its marketing?

Marketing is the wide ranges of activities that are involved in making sure that a company continues to meet the needs of its customers while getting an appropriate value in return (McNamara 2009). Successful marketing strategies are done in order to create a desire for a product. A marketer needs to understand what the consumer likes and what they dislike. They must also know what information will convince consumers to buy their product, and whom and what consumers perceive as a credible sources of information. "Some marketing strategies use fictional characters, celebrities, or experts (such as doctors) to sell products, while other strategies use specific statements or "health claims" that state the benefits of using a particular product or eating a particular food" (Marketing Strategies 2008).