Sony Corporation is #1 in its industry, with 60 years of integrity and high quality behind its well-recognized brand name. Recently, however, it has sustained serious damage to its product quality, customer service, and reputation for honesty and integrity that need to be addressed if Sony is to retain its supremacy. This strategic plan details the companyÆs strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, proposing an approach for leveraging them to recoup the companyÆs good standing, as well as its bottom line.
After 60 years of superior products and services, Sony has achieved a standing in the electronics industry rivaled by noneù#1. It has nearly universal brand recognition, and that brand stands for quality, innovation, integrity, and service. SonyÆs consistent efforts to keep its finger on the pulse of innovation have made it the pioneer in many electronics discoveries, such as the first Japanese tape recorder and the first Japanese radio, as well as the compact disk. Sony has a large base of customers who for a long time have refused to buy any other brand but Sony when it came to electronics.
Recently, however, Sony has seriously damaged its credibility and committed a breach of trust with its customers through questionable marketing tactics, poor quality of products and services, questionable choices of television shows that it sponsors, and even outright deceptionùa phony movie critic, fake graffiti, and a devious tactic to sell CDs that secretly installed a rootkit on the userÆs PC, allowing hackers to break in and obtaining information that was sent to Sony. These issues fly in the face of SonyÆs outward professions of commitment to integrity as voiced by new Chairman and CEO, Sir Howard Stringer. At their heart, these weaknesses are more serious than the mere sum of their offenses suggests; they are an indicator of a much deeper problemùa disregard for honesty that belies a lack of regard for the cu...