The Marketing Mix of Sony Corporation will explain the 4Ps or product, price, promotion, and place strategies of Sony Corporation.
Company Overview
Sony Corporation, widely known as Sony, is a Japanese multinational corporation. It is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified portfolio includes consumer electronics and professional electronics. The portfolio consists of gaming, entertainment and financial services as well.
The Sony Corporation was incorporated on May 7, 1946 in Japan.
Marketing Mix of Sony Corporation or 4 Ps
Products Strategy of Sony Corporation
Though Sony does not always work with innovative products but when it comes to the quality, it offers very high quality products of portfolio. Sony Company’s electronic products are offered to its consumers. The products include audio and video electronics. The target market of the company consists of many types of customer segmentations.
Sony has diversified portfolio of electronic product categories and these categories are also segmented into sub categories.
- Television – Bravia, Android TV, LCD, LED
- Imaging – Cybershot, Handycam, Memory Cards
- Audio & Video – Walkman, Digital Audio Players, Automobile Music System, Home Theatres, Memory Based Audio & Video Players
- Computer Peripherals – Hard Disks, Pendrive, Memory Cards,
- Gaming – Play station
- Laptops & computers
- Smartphones & Tablets
Price Strategy of Sony Corporation
The Sony Company follows high price policy. That means it does not offer product for the mass market. The price Sony charges for its products are higher than that of its competitors. But if the quality of the product is considered, then it is not a high price. Sony emphasizes on its quality.
The high price differentiates its products from similar products offered by other companies. However, it creates risk of reduction in sales. The reason is that the mass market cannot afford to buy these products.
If we observe the market and the sales of Sony, we can see that the Sony experiences a reduction is sales because of the low priced similar products offered by many Chinese companies. This results in declining of sales in the middle income families in many countries.
The mostly utilized three pricing strategies are premium pricing, economy pricing, and promotional pricing.
Place or Distribution Strategy of Sony
Places are where Sony distributes its products. Sony always thinks of easily distributable ways and makes it easier for its consumer to have these. Sony uses three types of distribution strategies. Mainly, Sony uses its own distributing channel to sell its products.
In the direct sales method, Sony sells its product directly to its consumers. Customers can visit Sony’s website and place order from specific product category and place an order by inputting their addresses. Later after the purchase confirmation, Sony sends the product to the customers’ places.
Another strategy Sony uses is the utilization of distributors and retailers channels. It supplies the products to different distributors and retailers around the world. Then these channels display these products in their own showrooms and make sales to the individual customers. Distributors and retailers take sales commission against every sale they make.
The last type of distributing strategy Sony uses is the wholesalers. After that, the wholesalers sell the products to the retailers and then retailers sell it to the final customers.
The three types of sales channels sony uses are the E-Commercial, Distributors, and Wholesalers.
Promotion Strategy of Sony Corporation
Advertising is a paid form of non-personal mass communication through various media to present and promote product and services by a sponsor. Sony uses advertising to promote its products. It advertises through different types of Medias such as television, newspapers, magazine, and social media. Sony also uses sales promotion to increase its sales in different territories.
To push its products to the market, Sony is heavily dependent on television commercials; every year, it allocate a large chunk of money for television commercials. According to Statistica, on an average, Sony spends more than 3.5 billion dollars for advertisement purpose every year. In 2018, it spent 3.85 billion dollars only for advertisement purpose. Other promotional strategies used by Sony corporation are, promotional pricing, telemarketing, providing coupon to customers, ads placement in websites and Emails, and leaflets.
Related: SWOT Analysis of Sony & SWOT Analysis of HTC
Sheikh Faizul Haque is an internet entrepreneur and the founder of The Strategy Watch; Graduated from North South University with a double major in Accounting & Finance in Bangladesh.
With a strong interest in developing and improving Business Strategy and to Conduct Business Analysis.