MGT301
11/9/2014
Sony’s and Matsushita’s management strategies
As we all known, Sony and Matsushita are two of the largest consumer electronic makers in Japan or even in the world. And in this reading, it points out the different strategies Sony and Matsushita use when they were facing the fierce competition in China ----- Matushita was accelerating its pace on stretching the supply chain in China while Sony unexpectedly decided to shift some of its manufacturing business in China back to Japan. In this article, I will discuss the reasons that lead them to make different decision as well as analysize the advantages and the disadvantages of their decision.
Differences between Matsushita and Sony
Frist of all, the differences between Matsushita and Sony’s products is one of the primary reason that makes their decision various. In the reading, it reveals that Matsuhita was focusing more on the low-tech products such as NN-MX20WF (their new model mocrowave oven), DVD player, automatic washers and 29-inch TVs. One the contrary, Sony’s product is more distinctive and it emphasizes more on developing new technology. Indeed, Sony has successfully at commercializing new technologies into innoative products such as the transistor radio, tape recorder, Beta- Max video recorder, CD, Walkman, minidisk, DVD and even camera and camcorder. In another words, Matsushita just centrated on being customer intimate but Sony differenticated itself by innovation. Therefore, as we can notice, the functional products of Matsushita have low demand uncertainties, long product life cycle, low profit marginsm low product variety, low stockout cost and low obsolescence but the innovative products of Sony have high demand uncertainties, short product life cycle, high profit margins, high stockout cost and high obsolescence.
Besides the differences between Matsushita’s and Sony’s products, the differences between their supply priorities is another critical factor which should be