I. Market Structure
Sony is a multinational conglomerate corporation and its main headquarters is located in Tokyo, Japan. The market structure that this corporation belongs to is an oligopoly type market. An oligopoly is a market form in which a market is dominated by a few number of producers and sellers e.g. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. With very few sellers, the company or companies have the ability to be aware and monitor each other. This means that these companies are interdependent with each other because Sony’s profit, truth be told, does depend on what the other corporations do; to a certain degree. Characteristics of an oligopoly are: few numbers of firms, high barriers of entry, product differentiation, interdependence and profits in the long-run.
In addition to an oligopoly, Sony is in a competition with Microsoft and Nintendo with their entertainment systems; the PS4, Xbox One and the Wii U respectively. A profit within Sony Corporation is the first aspect to comprehend. Its profits are measured with the total revenue (TR) collected from its products and services provided. These services include all of the following: consumer electronics, semiconductors, video games, media/entertainment and computer hardware and telecom equipment. Concerning competition, the level of competition that Sony Corporation partakes in is extremely high and deserving of our observance.
As mentioned in the latter paragraph, the level of competition for Sony and its rivals is high. Any level of impact is well known by the media which portrays its stock, revenue, prices, and profit in accordance with the average total cost (ATC) of a product. Although Sony is a corporation belonging to an oligopoly, the different sectors of the company ha...
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...nd Conclusion
To conclude this critique of Sony, the term essay project was divided into six distinct segments to organize and explain every aspect of the requirement thoroughly. As I have shown, Sony belongs to a market structure branded as an Oligopoly. There are a small number of competitors in each of its small sectors whether it is from its gaming department or its photography department among others. Sony’s history spawns at the wake of the Second World War. Throughout its history, Sony has both invented and cultivated products that have been brought to the consumers. The products were mentioned in the essay early on in accordance to the history section. Currently Sony is experiencing a positive streak, especially in its gaming department as the PlayStation 4 has been recently released. Concerning Sony as a whole, the corporation is doing exceptional as well.
Many people agree that Sony’s Playstation 4 is better than Microsoft’s Xbox One and vice versa. I have been gaming since I was seven years old and still am today. The first gaming console I ever had was the original Xbox. Throughout the years though, technology has improved vastly. The last generation of game consoles gave the industry a much needed boost and gave the consumer another commodity. With the eighth generation of consoles just arriving, a lot of people are wondering which console to buy. There is, however, more than just the choice of games. There’s differences in processors, graphics cards, hard drives, design, operating systems, ports, versatility, stability, controllers, and, of course, the games.
During the mid 2000’s until late 2012, media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper company, News Corp, conceived one the biggest scandals in media history to date. Speculation of phone hacking occurred in November of 2005 when the Royal’s officials reported possible voice mail phone hacking to the police because News of the World released a story about Prince William hurting his knee. The victims of the phone hacking scandal not only included the Royal family but also politicians, celebrities, people who were murdered, and family members of soldiers who died during combat totaling the victim list to 3,870. The entire duration of the investigation revealed not only disturbing information about the conducts committed by journalist, but the conspiring with private investigators and the London police enforcement, also known as the Scotland Yard, to cover up corruptions on all ends (CNN, 2012).
Best Buy operates in an oligopolistic market where there are significant barriers to entry and few large firms dominate the market by selling identical goods. Best Buy is a non-collusive oligopolist, existing in a strategic environment where firms do not cooperate, yet are interdependent due to the fact that a firm’s action affects the market. Recently, Best Buy experienced an increase in demand, increasing its revenues and profits.
Toys R Us is the world's largest children's specialty retailer. The company operates toy stores throughout the world and is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. In this paper I will give a brief company history, cite where the competitive environment is coming from, strategies that were attempted, and where they stand today.
...price, it also allows for them to increase their sales and enter into new markets, which in turn would help to increase their profits.
Each division’s performance had been judged on the basis of its profit and return on investment for several years. The said practice creates competition among the company’s divisions because each makes sure that it is more profitable than the others. As such was the case, there was high possibility that one division was enjoying profit at the expense of the other(s).
Topic A (oligopoly) - "The ' An oligopoly is defined as "a market structure in which only a few sellers offer similar or identical products" (Gans, King and Mankiw 1999, pp.-334). Since there are only a few sellers, the actions of any one firm in an oligopolistic market can have a large impact on the profits of all the other firms. Due to this, all the firms in an oligopolistic market are interdependent on one another. This relationship between the few sellers is what differentiates oligopolies from perfect competition and monopolies.
Rivalry among established firms is fierce. There are several factors that illustrate this: established market players (6.1). The product is highly standardized and the switching costs of the customers are low. Players are aggressive (6.2)
Stringer aimed to unite cutting-edge technology with entertainment content while reviving Sony’s electronic business. To combat the price drops of rivals Stringer streamlined Sony, unveiling a sweeping restructuring plan that cut 10,000 jobs, shed a number of unprofitable divisions and products and attempted to centralize decision-making (Palmer, 2006).
Nintendo, which is one of the video game industry competitors, have been the worldwide leader in creating the entertainment games. Nintendo’s video games have been sold everywhere in the world and they became in the list of the worlds best selling. The latest gaming console system, which is considered as a revolutionary video game console, was the Wii. It attracted a large number of people from different ages, which resulted in a large number of sales and profit. Unfortunately, nowadays the demand of the video games slightly decreased because of the new games and devices introduced recently. This internal analysis of Nintendo conducts its competitive strength assessment versus its competitors and analyzes the firm using the value chain analysis tool and the VRIO framework.
Firstly, Philips’ main capability is the decentralised structure with strong local subsdiaries, which is the National Organisations (NOs). Philips established NO after the war to replace the destroyed industrial plant in Netherlands. During this period, electronics was seen as luxury good and trade barrier between nations was high. The decentralised structure supports Philips in competing effectively with local competitors and enables them to adapt with the diverse local market. Each NO had the their strength and resources to sense and perform adaptive marketing as well as develop their product to respond the local differences. It is reflected in its television product. The first color TV is created in Canada, while the first stereo TV is created in Australia and the teletext TV is created in UK (Bartlett, C. A., 2001). The strong independence of these local subsidiaries also reinforced by the communication barriers during that period (Bartlett, C. A., Ghoshal, S., & Birkinshaw, J. M., 1995). The decentralised structure gives high degree of independence in each international unit, including decision-making autonomy (Daft, R. L., 2009). In the case of Philips, NOs as local subsidiaries had more power over the Product Departements (PD), as Philips gave NOs financial autonomy as well as liberty to set their own target. Thus, the NOs ability of autonomous marketing and product development function had become Philips m...
Organizations with competitive rivalry aim to gain advantages over their competitors and often use competitive behavior which consists of competitive actions and responses (Hitt, 2013). The results are competitive dynamics which consist of competitive acts and responses by competing firms in the industry (Hitt, 2013). One of the main benefits of being competitive is that it often results in economic growth (Martin, 2014). It is also believed that competitive rivalry has an influence over a firm’s performance as well (GIBB, 2010). Porsche consistently makes effort to improve their quality and to work towards providing a wider variety of sports car options in the
N.V. Philips (Netherlands) and Matsushita Electric (Japan) are among the largest consumer electronics companies in the world. Their success was based on two contrasting strategies – diversification of worldwide portfolio and local responsiveness for Philips, and high centralization and mass production for Matsushita.
Lynch (2012) asserts that it is necessary for an organization to carry out an analysis of its resources and capabilities as it help it in identifying the places where value can be added by the organization. This also helps the company in finding out ways to gain competitive advantage in the market. The given case on Nintendo showed that by 2005, Nintendo appeared to be heading towards an end as its rivals Microsoft and Sony has captured the market through Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 respectively. In this scenario, Nintendo innovated Wii which changed the market scenario in 2007. The case showed that innovative new strategy by Nintendo with its Wii games machine has transformed the industry and revived the profitability of the company. Since the release of the Wii, Nintendo is the leader in the video game industry. By introducing a totally new, one of a kind console, Nintendo has set clearly its goal and objectives, i.e. to reach an unexplored market share by introducing new gaming experiences, and therefore being the leader over its two main competitors, Sony and Microsoft. The case thus highlights the need to take a resource based view of the capabilities of the company so that such resources can be exploited to generate higher value for the firm.
This case study analysis is on Samsung Electronics Company (SEC) and how it has climbed up the ranks in the past decade via calculated marketing strategies, extensive market research and analysis, and a risky bet on how the market will evolve. Samsung’s principle outlook took time and education from within and thereafter the general market.