Sony Repositinoning Strategy
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Sony Corporation of America is the United States subsidiary of Japans Sony Corporation. Based on Inglewood, California, it is a company under which all Sony companies operate here in United States. Sony Electronics Inc., a Sony Corporation company, produces and sells all kinds of electronics ranging anything from wireless headphones and mp3 players to hi-fi systems and computers; Sony Electronics Inc makes it all. Established in 1960, this company has grown to be a huge company today, with nearly $46 billion in sales. With this continuous increase in the size of company, Sony has introduced many different product lines. Among them notebooks is one of them. Sony launched its VAIO series of notebooks in 1996. Since then it has gained a respectable position in the field of notebook computers. VAIOs are known for their attractive design, great functionality and high quality.
However, VAIOs market position has not been as satisfactory as the company would like to see it. Therefore, the company has to use a suitable market repositioning strategy in order to place itself on top of all other competing brands. We can see from the positioning table that VAIO falls under expensive and quality notebook brands. But we can also see from the same figure that it has a very little market capture with regards to the quality of the products it provides. The main reason indentified by the researchers regarding this issue is price. VAIOs are generally much more highly priced than other brands of notebooks. This is again due to the level of quality of product. But the consumers are not always rational when it comes to quality and price. They generally tend to place the price on top of the buying criteria followed by quality, ease of use, compatibility among others.
So, because of this poor competitive performance, a successful repositioning strategy for Sony should be analyzed. As we said earlier, the main factor for small market capture of Sony VAIO notebooks is identified to be the price of the product. To successfully reposition VAIO in the market, Sony has to focus on image repositioning of the company. Sony has been always known in the competitive market as “an expensive brand”. Because of this image, only selected consumers buy Sony products. Only people who have sufficient amount of budget to buy Sony products are attracted towards its product line. Other consumers often go to other brands without even analyzing about Sony products.