Marketing Audit

Table of Contents

Executive Summary......................................................................................Pg 3

Environmental Aspects........................................................................Pg 3, 4, & 5

Marketing.....................................................................................Pg 5, 6, 7, & 8

Product, Price, Place, & Promotion................................................... Pg 8, 9, & 10

Organization......................................................................................Pg 10 & 11

Audit Recommendations.............................................................Pg 11, 12, 13, & 14

Key Results...............................................................................................Pg 14

References................................................................................................Pg 15

Executive Summary

The selected marketing approach will be conducted on Sony Electronics. A thorough SWOT analysis will be performed to record the daily operations. This audit will also serve as a comparison analysis on the effect that Sony has towards the electronics industry. Sony's gaming division is in danger. The competition from Microsoft has been more that Sony executive had expected.

The most recent marketing approach That Sony chose to use was a controversial mistake. The deceitfulness has turned away a small percentage of Sony's consumers. It should be stated that Sony attracts a certain type of customer who is usually loyal to the brand. This marketing audit presents a challenge to complete in three weeks time. The reason for this is due to the information that is provided to the public by Sony. The Sony of America website is geared more towards advertising and sales. Sony Corporation website of Japan is as imagined in Japanese. I will be assisted by my wife to translate the language.

Environmental Aspects

The targeted market for Sony has stayed level until recent years. After the small consumer electronics (Walkman) years, Sony developed a unique following of dedicated customers. These consumers preferred Sony's product over the competition despite Sony's premium price. This is astonishing taking into account that the competition was cheaper in almost every category. Sony has often allowed the market to come to its organization versus seeking the next fad. One example is the insurgence of portable MP3 players. This market was dominated by Apple Macintosh for years until the Sony loyalist lobbied with the consumer electronics giant to inter the single-occupied genre. There have been occasions when Sony has taken the initiative and introduced itself to an industry that is new and foreign.

Great success was accomplished when Sony entered the gaming industry by way of the Playstation. Ironically, the same success of the Playstation eventually became Sony's main source of income as it dominated the industry for the next ten years. In contrast, Sony has failed when entering a new market way too many times. The most recent flaw was the audio disc formatting war. Sony insisted that its mini disc (MD) was the wave of the future. Unfortunately, the cheaper to produce compact disc (CD) proved to be the universal format. Sony stubbornly released the MD into the market anyway hoping that Sony enthusiast would catch on to the technology. When this failed, Sony attempted to use a similar format again as a required peripheral for the portable version of the Playstation (PSP). Sony has ventured again into a format war with the digital video disc (DVD). This subject will be discussed further on for this audit.

Competition for Sony has had highs and lows in the industry. When Sony brings innovative technology to the targeting market, they usually reign as the frontrunner. However, Sony is notorious for waiting entirely too long to capitalize on an idea created by a competitor. Apple's iPod has been in mass production for nearly four years before Sony finally decided to enter Apple's market share. It is clearly too late to gain ground, but Sony is trying to lure in loyal customers. An industry war that has yet to be determined is the gaming genre that Sony has dominated for a decade. This is where Sony's marketing strategy hit a major bump in the road. After several years of overtaking the gaming industry from Nintendo and Sega, Sony received competition from Microsoft in 2001 with the introduction of the Xbox. The big "M" machine went into a head on battle with the Playstation 2. Microsoft believes that it put a major impression on the industry as a whole. Despite releasing the Xbox one year after the Playstation 2's debut, Microsoft became the #2 industry leader behind Sony.

To gain an astonishing lead, Microsoft released its next generation console a year earlier than expected. The arrival of the Xbox 360 console in the fall of 2005 was both a big shock and sent a message to the industry that Microsoft is here to stay. Sony hastily announced its new console for the next generation at the 2005 Electronic Entertainment Expo (EÑ-). Sony surprised onlookers with a spring 2006 release. Speculation immediately dispersed that the announcement was rushed to halt Sony enthusiast from jumping on the Xbox 360 bandwagon. Rumors were also spreading that the Playstation 3 (PS3) model that was on display at the 2005 EÑ- was simply a shell casing and not the final product. Many of months of hearsay led to the disappointing announcement that many predicted. Due to various reasons such as the slow development of the Blu-Ray DVD drive and the Cell processor chip delay, the PS3 release date was pushed back until fall 2006. Ironically, this announcement was made at the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo (Wikipedia, 2006).

Sticking with the gaming industry, Sony's technology decision was also put into question. While a DVD formatting war continues to take shape, Sony's version of the format is included in its next generation console. Analysts believe this is Sony's way of forcing its consumers to accept the Blu-Ray DVD format over the High Definition DVD format. Sony is not taking into consideration that the DVD formatting war may go to Toshiba and HD-DVD. If this happens, owners of the soon to be released PS3 will be short-changed on movie