Marketing Mix and Segmentation of Sony - Essay Example

? Sony Corporation Marketing is the most important component of any business regardless of its type and size. It plays the vital rolein growth of businesses. The purpose of this assignment is to know about marketing, its different types and how Sony Inc uses marketing and apply different marketing tactics to it to sustain in this competitive environment (AMA, 2004). Not only has the marketing strategy helped Sony to grow but also has played an important role in making it a brand name. There are a lot of definitions of marketing we can find in the present dictionary but to comprehend in a better way we can define it as “getting the right product or service in the right quantity, to the right place, at the right time and making a profit in the process" (Guiltinan, 1996). Marketing can be said as identifying the wants of the customer and providing them with those wants at a price they are willing to buy. It is not only about advertising your product but also making sure that your marketing of a product reaches to the right target market. To get better results, we use several components of marketing which include planning, pricing, promotion and distribution (Kotler, 2012). The concept of 4p’s that is product, pricing, placement and promotion mixed together in an efficient manner gives out effective results (Joshi, 2005). Talking briefly about the 4p’s, they are said to be the backbone of marketing. Using the 4p’s in correct manner can bring out good results. The first P is taken as product, the product or service being sold by a company (Adcock & Al Halborg, 2001). This may include the product characteristics such as quality, design, service warranty, variety and brand name. The second P is the place. It concerns majorly with the target market of the company’s product. What product is made for whom and in what geographical location it should be sent the most is what is decided in place. The third P is the price which decides what price to a company should charge for its product. This is decided by the purchasing power of the consumers, the demand for the product and its utility. The forth and the last P is promotion in which the company decides what promotional techniques to use to gain maximum sales and profit from their product. This may include advertising, door to door selling, distribution channels etc (David A. Acker, 1988). The company we have chosen to study the marketing techniques and the application of these techniques is Sony Inc. The word Sony is a Latin word which means sound and in Japanese it means smart and presentable (Inc., 2013). Sony Corporation known as Sony is a Japanese company and have it’s headquarter in Tokyo, Japan. It has many diversified businesses under its umbrella. The company is majorly known for its entertainment products it provides to its customers which include televisions, stereo systems and playsation games. It also has a financial service head which includes banks and investment companies, though Sony is majorly recognized as a company which provides high quality electronic entertainment products. Sony stands on 87th in the top 500 companies of Fortune (Global, 2013). Sony Corporation is the subsidiary of Sony Group which deals in the electronics. It has a research and development department which is responsible for the development of the new products. This makes Sony one of the greatest and largest electronic manufacturing companies in the world. We will now examine that how Sony’s marketing techniques have given the company a huge brand name and success globally. We will look into the four P’s that is product, place, price and promotion of the company and discuss their roles in building up what Sony is now today (Sony Corporation, 2012). Product Sony’s product portfolio is extremely vast ranging from a variety of electronic devices to a number of products in the entertainment category. Sony manipulates the attributes of its products to satisfy its diversified large target market. Customers constantly demand new and innovated products; Sony being a company competing in the technological markets, the needs for them to have constantly newly developed products is much larger. So far Sony has met this challenge always coming out on the top. The major product categories offered by Sony are home video and audio, television and projectors, a wide variety of cameras, home theatre systems, in-car entertainment, batteries and chargers, mobile phones, portable audios, games and computer peripherals and several other different accessories. Each of these categories has several sub categories, and Sony has tried to serve its audience by offering an extremely large variety of goods in each of the category. Sony not only offers products to individuals customers but to professional organizations as well proof of it being the range of projectors and professional cameras made by Sony. Sony is constantly developing new products in each category and is the market leader in several of its product categories. What is so great about Sony’s product portfolio is that it offers products to different people for different usages and caters to people having a widely variant budget. Sony is majorly known for its larger product items like television and home theatres but its small products like mp3 players and play stations in the games categories are also extremely popular (Bhasin, 2010). Placement Placements are basically making required quantity of products available for customers to easily access and buy. Placement is an extremely important function for a company for the entire marketing process of developing products and creating a need and desire for them becomes utterly useless if those products are not conveniently available for customers to purchase. Sony is a distributor of high end delicate and at times extremely pricey objects; hence its distribution channel has to be extremely good to not only handle these products safely but had to offer reliability as well. Also the retailers Sony choices have to be in line with the image of the company; safe, reliable and high end. Sony practices selective distribution and places its products in few retail outlets besides its company dealers Sony World. Sony is able to practice selective distribution for high end products make it possible for companies to have limited distributors for when it comes to high end products, brand loyalty and company names are factors that are often considered more important than the mere concept of ease of availability. Sony uses different channels of distribution; manufactures is the zero-level channel and retailer is the first level channel. The Sony website is often by customers to guide them to the nearest retailer or distributor of Sony products. Sony’s massive and successful distribution channel is proved by its presence and availability in over a 100 countries of the world (Rose, 2013). Price Pricing decision are made in due consultation with the marketing management is an extremely important factor as it is probably the only P of the marketing mix that can be quickly changes. Also important is the fact that price is one of the most common factor considered by consumers when using among different competing products of the same category (GCE, 2005). Companies like Sony need to keep in mind that customers often directly relate the quality of the product to price and when it comes to high end products, they are often willing to pay high prices but these customers need the product to give them the value of their products. Sony’s products are usually pricier as compared to its major competitors in most categories. Price ranges for some for some of Sony’s products are as follows Laptops: starting from $200 and going well over $2000 Television: starting from $329 up to $24,999 Promotion Sony realizes very well that promotional efforts are extremely important in order to raise customer awareness about a company and its different products for Sony, its promotional efforts are even more important because of its extremely large number of competitors and when it comes to technology or for that matter any other product, out of sight is out of mind. Sony advertises its product through various different medias and sponsors different events to make consumers aware about its products. Sony also owns a television channel to increase awareness levels. Television advertisements for it television, cameras, home theatre and games category are quite common. Sony also uses specific events to highlight its products for example the English premier league is used to advertise play station and its games. Newspapers are also a medium often used by Sony to advertise its products. The frequency of different advertisement increases when Sony introduces new products or when there are sale offers. Sony also uses direct response advertising where customers are encouraged to give their feedback about their experience with Sony products. Also any posters or promotional activities designed by Sony distributors are under specified guidelines by the parent company. Sony also uses a wide variety of promotional sale strategies whereby customers are often given extra incentive to buy a particular product for example free home audio with television sets etc... Also, warranties often a year long and sometimes longer are a common feature of almost all Sony products. Sony website offers product information about all its products to facilitate customers in every way possible (Globaldata, 2010). When we look at the marketing strategy of Sony, we find it to be complete in every aspect. Their product is designed in such a manner that it is easy to use and understandable in any part of the world. The quality of their product is very well maintained and most importantly their research and development department continuously works on upgrading the product to add as much value as they can (Jamie M. Kisner, 2013). Coming on to placement, Sony has its products all around the globe. They have everyone as their target market and with the years gone by it seem as if they have achieved their target market quite handsomely. Talking about their pricing strategy, the price of Sony products are almost the same whatever place it be. Starting from USA to India, the price remains the same. This means that they have no discrimination amongst the places they operate. Secondly they have a wide range of products catering to every income group. Mentioned earlier their product range starts from $ 200 to $ 24000 which shows that there is not just one income class they are targeting on rather there is something for everybody. Finally talking about the promotion, Sony uses its promotion mix very accurately (Pham-Gia, 2007). The advertisements they make completely reflects their product. They also use different means and methods to advertise differently according to the people and culture of the area they operate in. In conclusion, I would say that Sony has used its marketing mix in a great way to achieve successes even in difficult times. They have changed their strategy according to the requirements of the customer and have managed well to coupe up with the rapidly changing technology. For Sony, achieving high name in the world, marketing has played the major role in their success. Works Cited Adcock, D. & Al Halborg, C. R., 2001. Marketing: principles and practice. 4th ed. s.l.:s.n. AMA, 2004. 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