INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS ANALYSIS: SONY CORPORATION
This research examines an international business organization · the Sony Corporation, which has corporate headquarters in Japan and operates through subsidiary corporations located in every global geographical region (Sony Corporation, 2002).
The presentation of the findings of this examination covers five areas of interest. These areas of interest are (1) corporate history, (2) international operations, including subsidiaries in countries other than Japan, (3) corporate culture, (4) internal operations, including the firm's approach to product marketing, and (5) Sony's use of alliance and partners.
The firm that was to become Sony Corporation, Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, was founded by Akio Morita, Masaru Ibuka, and Tamon Maeda with money borrowed from Morita's father. The company's first important product was a tape recorder marketed in 1950. With licensing of transistor technology from Western Electric, the company introduced its first transistor radio in 1955 (Sony Corporation, 2000).
The company's transistor radio started a consumer electronics boom in Japan. The Sony brand name first appeared on the company's electronic products in 1957. The name of the company officially became the Sony Corporation in 1958 (Sony Corporation, 2000).
The company introduced transistor television sets in 1959 and solid-state videotape recorders in 1961.
The pace of new product introduction increased, with the introduction of the first video recorder for consumer use in 1964, the solid-state condenser microphone in 1965, and the Trinitron color television in 1968. The company's Betamax video-cassette-recorder (VCR), introduced in 1976 lost the market to VHS technology. The introduction of the Walkman personal stereo in 1979, however, vaulted Sony firmly in the international leadership in consumer electronics (Sony Corporation, 2000).
International Operations [I...