Question 1
Cultural meaning for Sony and its products was developed with the help of adapting country-specific characteristics of a product. For example, Walkman that was supposed to be marketed in the US was developed with regard to individualistic American culture. Individualistic nature of Americans was reflected in Walkman advertising campaign (Schiffman and Kanuk 306). Sony emphasized the difference in American and Japanese cultures while making this difference an indisputable advantage. Cultural meaning was developed with the help of Walkman advertising campaign using space creature meaning multicultural environment of American society. Walkman space creature was to embody lifestyle of migrants from different countries seeking for freedom and independence. Music is often associated with freedom and it was a good idea to bind promotion campaign of Walkman cassette player with the value of freedom in the American society since freedom is core cultural characteristic of Americans (du Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay and Negus 66).
The role of marketing strategies is to apply to cultural values of a particular society aiming to achieve financial goals of a company. Creating cultural meaning is the main goal of any advertising campaign. Any company aiming to expand certain market should know characteristics of its target market and explain how a product can be useful for the target audience. Marketing strategies should reflect mission and policy of a company. A good mission statement should promote values to a society. Thus, Walkman marketing campaign reflected aspiration for independence and realization of ambitious plans inherent in young Americans which was Sony’s target audience. The initiative of a company should create positive changes in lifestyles forcing cultural changes in a market. Marketing strategies can create and maintain cultural meaning through advertising, organizational ethics, and company policies. A good marketing strategy should reflect changes living habits, fashions, styles, preferences, and semantics aiming to promote changes for better life.
Question 2
Globalization offers many opportunities for the large companies, such as new markets for marketing their products, outsourcing company’s operations to reduce labor expenses, sharing technologies, and deriving benefits from international cooperation, and making strategic alliances. In general, the impact of globalization on Sony Corporation cannot be unambiguously evaluated. Sony expanded to a large American market and got the opportunity to increase its sales. On the one hand, it appeared that Sony’s regional positioning did not coincide with the necessity to expand globally. Sony’s local marketing strategy did not match new goals of the company connected with global expansion. On the other hand, the new marketing strategy should apply to the cultural value of multinational audience and unify marketing efforts at the same time. Obviously, globalization was beneficial for Sony because the company succeeded to increase sales due to expansion to the US market (Schiffman and Kanuk 306). However, cultural values of Japanese society were diametrically opposite to those of American society that posed challenges for Sony (du Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay and Negus 54).
The main marketing challenge is that the products marketed on the global market have to be adapted to the culture of a particular nature. At the same time, products must be recognizable and should be associated with a certain brand. The main challenge Sony faced was that it needed to expand the new American market while maintaining its position on the Japanese market. Marketing strategy used to promote Walkman on the American market was successful to increase sales in this market space. However, Japanese consumers considered Walkman outdated. As Asian market contained growth potential for Sony it faced the challenge to develop another strategy to position Walkman in the Asian market (Schiffman and Kanuk 307). Sony needed to unify its market efforts aiming to reach multicultural audience that was a difficult task.
Question 3
Sony’s products are recognizable not only in Japan due to exceptional design of its products known as “Sony way” (du Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay and Negus 44). Thus, the attempts to go global were not successful because Walkman was perceived as Japanese despite it was mainly designed for the US market. However, the design of Walkman supposed to be “American” was perceived as “Japanese American” or the product designed for the US market but from Japanese point of view (Schiffman and Kanuk 306). The strategy that was perceived as “global” by Sony’s top managers did not appear to be initially global. The strategy of marketing products on regional markets with regard to cultural differences failed because products were not perceived as manufactured by one producer. Therefore, global image of the company suffered. Sony needed to change its global strategy towards unification (Schiffman and Kanuk 307).
Sony usually markets itself as regional provider rather than global. Currently, the biggest challenge for Sony is to continue global expansion while bargaining local market because it represents a significant growth potential. For example, Walkman was associated with Japanese identity because of its form and colors used in its design. It was introduced under different brand names in other countries while other companies expanded globally started to standardize their products aiming to unify their global strategy (du Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay and Negus 77). Definitely, Sony would be better served by creating a more uniform global image because establishing balance between global and local marketing efforts is important for large corporations because of financial, technological, and political reason (du Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay and Negus 79).
Question 4
When marketing its products Sony considers the following factors: global trends, ethnic and cultural features of target audience, and age of target audience.
For example, when developing Walkman, Sony took into account the trend toward individualism that was popular in the world. Walkman appealed to the broad range or cultural and ethnic groups as a space creature meaning foreign origin of the product. Walkman was associated with English-speaking world seen by Japanese eyes. Interestingly, Sony will have to change its marketing strategy as future growth may come from Asian audience aged 15-40 – audience that was not previously targeted (Schlender 306). Sony has 50 country-specific sites where customers can order Sony’s products. Target audience – young people from 14 to 24 – viewed Walkman as outdated at the peak of its consumption and Sony revised marketing strategy investing in advertising campaign to reposition the product with regard to the demands of young people.
Question 5
Recently, Sony started to cooperate with such companies as Palm, Intel, and Cablevision aiming to expand its opportunities in the field of innovations. For example, Sony worked with American company Palm when developing hand-held organizer using multi-media capabilities. Also, Sony cooperated with Intel to create standards for home networks and with Cablevision to create a broadband network. However, Sony is still considered insular because it rarely uses international cooperation as leverage for business growth. Other attempts to develop cooperation with cable, television networks, and music companies ended with failure as Sony. Thus, Sony is perceived as typically Japanese company.
According to the Annual Report (9) of the company, Sony cannot adequately manage strategic alliances and joint ventures because of inability to deal with legal and cultural issues while changing their status in partnerships. The number of issues is connected with developing partnership, namely: conflicts of interest, inability to exercise sufficient control over strategic alliances and joint ventures, and the risk of losing proprietary technology. In addition, joint ventures may hamper Sony’s reputation by their inappropriate actions that may negatively influence the brand (Annual Report 9). Therefore, I consider that Sony should not develop any strategic alliances since the company has strong R&D base and is able to develop innovation by its own forces providing core competitive advantage of the company in the world market.
Sony’s marketing strategy in America differs from Japanese promoting techniques by high level of individualism because USA culture is characterized by the highest level of individualism among other countries. This tendency could be traced in Walkman marketing strategy that promoted freedom and independence (Schiffman and Kanuk 306). The level of individualism is low in Japanese culture since this is collectivist nation (du Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay and Negus 70). Another difference is that Sony marketed itself as a regional company rather than global. On the contrary, many multinational US companies market themselves as global. However, this strategy did not prove itself appropriate. Therefore, Sony made attempts to unify its marketing efforts so the brand could be recognizable worldwide (Schiffman and Kanuk 306).
Works Cited
“Annual Report.” Sony Corporation, 2008. Web. 01 Aug. 2013.
du Gay, Paul, Hall, Stuart, Janes, Linda, Mackay, Hugh, and Negus, Keith. Doing Cultural Studies. The story of the Sony Walkman. London: Sage Publications Inc, 2003. Print.
Schiffman, Leon, and Kanuk, Leslie. Consumer Behavior. 9th ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2007. Print.
