Marketing Strategy and SWOT Analysis of Sony

As most of you know Sony is one of the world’s leading electronic companies. Its huge range of products includes professional and consumer electronics, entertainment, gaming, and financial services. Almost all of its major products are competent in the market while some of them are in leading positions. Surely, one of the major reasons for their high number of sales is their marketing strategy. For the next 15 minutes of your time (hopefully ?), I am going to speak about some of the marketing strategies that Sony uses to maintain and boost the sales of its products, as well as do a SWOT analysis. I hope you will find them helpful.

In order to do our first steps in understanding the driving forces behind their success, firstly I want to speak about their brand mission and vision.

Sony’s Mission Statement.

As Sony’s former chairman Kazuo Hirai stated in 2012, his mission is “to ensure Sony continues to be a company that provides customers with kando – to move them emotionally – and inspires and fulfills their curiosity. 

For those who don’t know what Kando is, it’s a Japanese word that means sensitivity and if you want to fully understand the term, just recall how excited you were when you owned your first PlayStation (I guess most of you have owned at least one).

Sony’s Vision Statement.

What refers to its vision, Sony states “Our vision is to use our passion for technology, content, and services to deliver kando, in ways that only Sony can.” As you already noticed, Sony bases its tactics on Kando which reflects in creating a passion for the brand. Their innovative solutions and creative designs have been key tools in delivering the special values that Sony has. 

Now it’s time to get started with finding out methods that Sony uses for its positioning.

Here I want to begin by discussing some of Sony’s social media posts in order to understand their tactics and positioning as a brand. 

The above picture is taken from an Instagram page of Sony. As you can see, the picture displays a man holding the brand new model of Sony Alpha trying to capture the not-very-unusual autumn view unusually. Thus, the post tries to deliver the message that this product can be a motive for self-expression or fostering creativity.

This in fact, helps to represent one’s perceptions and visions toward the world by the display of emotions, the storytelling and finding unique lightning and colors as you notice in the above picture. These kinds of brands are typical to the Creator Brand archetype.  

So what does the Creator Brand archetype represent? 

Aim: Giving a form to a vision.

Strategy: Concentration on developing artistic skills and controls.

Desire: Creation of something that has a long-lasting value.

Some other famous brands that use Creator Brand archetype as their brand identity include Lego, Adobe and Pinterest. One thing that these brands have in common is that all of them provide customers with tools to create or reinterpret.

What are the messaging levels of the Creator?

Level 1: Customers routine imaginations that include daydreams and fantasies

 Level 2: The creative and innovative approaches of the customer in an imitative way 

 Level 3: Structuring personal visions 

 Level 4: Finding patterns to influence culture and society.

The Creator Archetype is a promising identity for your brand if:

• your product includes features that provide a variety of options for customers, supports self-expression or have innovative and artistic interface/design.
• your business is in a creative field like arts, PR, marketing, technological innovation, etc.
• you want to differentiate your brand from the ones that base their strategy on minimizing the choices for the customers by “doing it all by themselves”
• your customers are ready to devote some time for some additional creativity

Brand Archetypes. Why do we need them in practice?

All of us know that many companies have problems in presenting their key values and attitudes. Sometimes our messaging leads to misunderstanding or it does not represent what we aimed to say in reality. Here of course the importance of the brand archetypes is very crucial. How to create a good company culture? 

What are its values? Here are some questions that need to be answered properly. “8 steps to a complete archetypal branding” eBook tells us a lot.  We have written a book that goes deeper in these notions and reveals archetypes in specific ways. Just uncover the brand archetypes with “8 steps to a complete archetypal branding” eBook.

Now let’s discuss the SWOT analysis of Sony to have more awareness about factors that affect their business decisions.

Strengths:

• Strong Brand Image: Throughout years Sony Corporation has made a name for itself as one of the strongest brands in the market. A strong brand image has a trustworthy image in the eyes of customers, it is a huge supporting factor in the process of attracting customers.
• Quality of Products: Obviously, the image of the brand wouldn’t be strong if the business is not offering a quality product. 
• After-sale service: Sony’s after-sale service is on another level and worth mentioning in the strengths.
• Business Diversification: When you think about Sony first thing that comes to your mind is electronics which include TVs, PlayStation mobile phones, etc. However, Sony also offers financial services and owns the famous Sony Pictures Studios. Diversification lessens the market risks for Sony and helps to maintain stability in business.

Weaknesses:

• Mobile Devices: One of Sony’s weaknesses is its position in the mobile world. The performance quality of mobile devices of Sony is considerably lower compared to the market leaders.
• Promotional Activities: Sony isn’t involved in promotional actives as often as its competitors
• The high cost of production: Sony’s high cost of production, especially in the TV business, is resulting in higher prices of the product. This gives a competitive advantage to its competitors which have already resulted in losing a market share to some of them. 

Opportunities:

• The market for Home Entertainment Devices: The global home entertainment devices market size was valued at USD 225.0 billion in 2018 and is anticipated to register a CAGR of 6.3% from 2019 to 2025. As Sony offers one of the best products in this industry, it is logical to anticipate that by maintaining its high rank in this market it can enjoy even higher profit for the next five years. 
• New innovative approaches: In today’s rapidly developing technological world having new innovative products is essential and will surely boost the revenues and give a competitive advantage to the company
• Owning Full Sony Ericsson Venture: Acquiring Ericsson’s share of Sony Ericson joint venture can give Sony an opportunity to act as an independent mobile producer and find innovative ways to improve its position in smartphone and tablet industry while enjoying the full profit of the product. 

Threats: 

• Strong competition: Sony is in a static competition with some world-class names such as Samsung, LG Xbox, thus it is important to maintain the pace of the competition with new innovative approaches and promotional activities.  
• Prices: Sony has a high price product policy, so there is a fear that more customers may switch to relatively affordable products for different reasons. (One reason may be the global crisis that the world is facing because of COVID-19 at the time I am writing this blog)
• Cyber-attacks: Cyber-attacks are other potential threats, as Sony has recently increased its reliance on networks and online databases. 

Now it’s time to move on to discussing Sony target markets.

Sony WH-1000XM3 headphone commercial is a good example to explain one of their major target markets. 

The following commercial includes a man aged probably between 23 and 30, who is about to have a routine work trip. At the beginning of the video, the man wears the headphones that offer Sony’s new noise cancellation feature and as soon as he does so, he starts to see the world in a different way.

The headphone as his clothing style and leather bag gives this man a self-confidence and make him feel an important part of society. Moreover, the commercial also mentions the talk and touch feature of the headphone which emphasizes that the person is using the latest technological product, thus he is well aware of new trends in the world. 

 So what can we observe about the personality of the man in the commercial?

 We can state that this person belongs to Carpe Diems segment by the Garrison group.

What do we know about Carpe Diems?

Lifestyle and Values: 

Carpe Diems have a dynamic lifestyle. They are outgoing and love to enjoy life. At weekends they like to hang out with their friends and prefer to spend their time in fancy places. What refers to their perception of career goals, they give huge importance to it as they think that money is their main source of independence and they may partly sacrifice personal life to have a prosperous career.

Moreover, they like to be in tune with new trends and technologies, as the internet plays a huge role in their lives. Other than that, they like to exercise and eat healthy food regularly to keep up with their lively lifestyle.

Shopping Preferences:  

Carpe Diems give huge importance to the image of the brand. They prefer quality over quantity as they are more into higher standards of living. As consumers, they have a high level of brand loyalty, thus they rarely switch brands.

Shopping and spending are one of the activities that they enjoy the most as sometimes they may even seek personal pleasure in daily purchases. An important thing for them to believe is that they always get the best deal.  

Here are some interesting facts about Carpe Diems

1. Playing cards is one of their favorite leisure activities. They try to seek challenge, thrill and good times especially when they play poker. 
2. Carpe Diems are regular cinema visitors. Newly released movies are not only a pleasure for them to watch, but they also keep them aware of the new trends in the film industry. Moreover, they like visiting cultural events such as exhibitions, wine cellars and book launch events. 
3. Not active TV viewers. This is mostly due to the fact that they are more into the most mainstream and popular programs which are easier to be accessed via the internet. What refers to music channels, they turn it more frequently mainly as background noise while having a house party with friends. 
4. Finally, as you already understand, they are frequent users of the internet. Their purposes of uses include chatting with friends, getting the latest news, finding out where can they go in the evening, finding a date, etc. 

16 Personalities (why do you need them in your business?)

Carpe Diems are one of the most powerful and solvent segments in 16 personalities. They always follow the trends of the given period and try to be the leader of the trend․ For example, be a successful businessman, or successful athlete or rapper. They are very talented, but at the same time are lazy and ambitious.

They love to achieve great success at the expense of their talent, their skills. You also should choose the right target (ideal buyer persona) for your business and in this context, you should research all 16 Personalities, 16 types of clients that you may meet during your daily business and marketing activity. To find out more about 16 types you can click below to get our e-book “16 Personalities”.

So, these were some interesting facts and examples about Sony and its marketing strategies that indicate why they are one of the leaders in their respective industries. I hope you found it informative and useful. For more similar blogs, you can check out the main page of our website thesocialgrabber.com.