The Impact of Marketing Strategy for Increasing the Competitiveness: A Case Study of Sony Corporation

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First of all, it would give me great pleasure to show my gratitude to my professor, for his propositions, remarks, understanding and patience. It would also be an honour to express gratitude to my parents, my mother, my father, my sister and my brother for their endless support in my life and allowing me to make all my decisions. I would also like to take the opportunity to show appreciation to my co-workers for their expert cooperation on every occasion. I would also like to be grateful to the Department, managers of the university, instructors and students who have supported me throughout this research.

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DECLARATION

I declare that the content presented in this thesis/dissertation is, in my understanding and opinion, original and has not been presented for scholarly assessment in the past, either completely or partly, for an academic degree at this educational institution or elsewhere. I would also like to admit that I have studied and understood the principles, prerequisites, processes and guidelines of the University regarding the higher academic degree research award and to my dissertation. I would also like to declare that I have abided by the University's principles, prerequisites, processes and guidelines.

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ABSTRACT

Marketing strategy seeks to develop effective response to changing environments by defining market segments, developing and positioning products for the targeted markets, focusing on the product development, advertising, distribution, marketing communication and pricing. Resource based marketing strategy believes that performance is driven by the resource profile of the organisation. The field of strategic management has placed competitive strategies in a prominent position for teaching, research, and management practice for over two decades. Within the topic of competitive strategies, the theory of generic strategies argues that a core set of business-level strategies exist within all industries. Firms that are able to use these strategies are expected to have high performance. Firms that lack a distinct competitive strategy or combine differing strategies are predicted to have low performance. It is well accepted that firm-level competitive action is at core of business strategy and competitive position. Recently, a stream of strategic management research known as competitive dynamics focuses on the relationship between competitive action and competitive advantage has drawn much attention from strategy researchers. Competitive dynamics emphasises the dynamic nature of firm level strategic behaviour, i.e., actions initiated by one firm may trigger off a series of actions among the competing firms. However, the marketing strategy of the Sony is different from other traditional companies. The company enjoys a wide number of loyal customers who are willing to pay high prices for the high-end products. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of marketing strategy for increasing the competitiveness with the help of Sony Corporation case study.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTII

DECLARATIONIII

ABSTRACTIV

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1

Background1

Sony Corporation Overview3

Aims and objectives6

Research question6

Structure of the thesis6

Chapter I: Introduction6

Chapter II: Literature Review7

Chapter III: Methodology7

Chapter IV: Data ...