Market Mastery: Evaluating Sony's Adaptive Organisational Structure for Global Competitive Edge

Executive summary:

Organisational structure of an organisation needs to be relevant to changing market trend and buying perfection as well as preference of the customers. There are several divisions of the organisational structure such as function-based division, business type division and geographical division. The marketers of an organisation needs to conduct research on the current market trend which will assist them to chose the relevant organisational structure in terms of grabbing competitive position in the international market. This report is going to discuss the entire organisational structure of Sony, the Japanese multinational conglomerate, with evaluating that how the structure of Sony is relevant to its overall organisational strategies and marketing planning. By using the relevant academic resources this report is going to analyse that why the organisational structure of Sony is developed in this way and how the overall organisational structure of Sony assist it marketers to adapt it business with changing market trend.

Introduction:

Organisational structure is the system that is associated with managing the crucial activities of an organisation such as task allocation, supervision, coordination, setting organisation goals, planning for the organisational strategies and making effective marketing strategies. This report is going to discuss the entire organisational structure of Sony, the Japanese multinational conglomerate, with evaluating that how the structure of Sony is relevant to its overall organisational strategies and marketing planning. By using the relevant academic resources this report is going to analyse that why the organisational structure of Sony is developed in this way and how the overall organisational structure of Sony assist it marketers to adapt it business with changing market trend.

Outlines Sony’s organisational structure and why the structure is in this way:

Sony Corporation has build an organisational structure that is relevant to the market in which it operates it business, its customer’s needs and the changing buying behaviour of customer. This firm has made effective modification in the overall organisation structure in term of accommodating the marketing pressuring coming from different sector such as entertainment, gaming and financial service market. Sony marketers believe in consistent innovation as well as creativity in its overall organisation structure which assist the marketers to grab strong competitive position in the international market. As Sony is the major global business in the electronic market, it has highly relevant organisational structure in terms of addressing the challenges in global market (panmore.com, 2020). The organisational structure of Sony is as follows:

Features of Sony’s organisational structure:

Sony Corporation has made the classification of the organisation structure in systematic manner which is mainly based on the products, services and functions of this company. The overall organisational structure of Sony is classified as follows;

Function based group

Business type group

Geographic division

Function-based group:

The function-based organisation structure of Sony is formed in terms of increasing the functional efficiency of the staffs and managers. This classification is mainly based on bringing modernisation as well as innovation in the overall work process and departmental functions of Sony. In according to Ashkenas et al. (2015), in case of function based organisational structure, staffs who deals with similar marketing functions and work process in the workplace are included into same functional group. For example the Research & Development staffs of Sony have same functions and targets which make the staffs to be included into R&D group. According to Daidj (2016) through using the function-based organisational structure, organisations are able to analyse the individual roles of different departments, which is important for evaluating the strength and weakness of individual group. The functions based organisation structure of Sony is as follows:

CEO

Finance

Legal department, compliance staffs, CSR, External relation staffs, corporate communication department and information and privacy department

Logistics, manufacturing, quality, procurement and environment

New business

Human resources

General affairs

Sales and marketing

Engineering

Due to the globalised market trend, functional-based organisational structure of Sony Corporation can be considered as highly relevant with its innovative marketing strategies and organisational target. According to Cheek et al. (2019), the function-based organisational structure assists organisation to grab the effective decisions for dealing with any market risk. In case of Sony, functions based organisational structure is supportive to its marketers as it has similar sets of skills and knowledge in each functional group, which assists the entire organisation to conduct quick decision making process. On the other hand, through this functional structure, it is possible for the Sony Corporation to have different business groups which have similar functions which assists the marketers to conduct easy communication with members in each group. On the contrary Chelladurai et al. (2017) argued that, though function-based organisational structure is supportive for an organisation in terms of having similar skills sets and easy communication with group members in effective manner, but the functions-based organisational structure lacks innovation in the marketing and decision making process, due to lack of diversity in marketing strategies, work process and business decisions. In this context, as Sony is the major global multinational organisation that deals with changing market trend and rising competition in the electronic market, it needs improvisation in its function-based organisational structure for motivating the staffs each team to be creative and innovative in terms of developing new business ideas. in this context, the marketers of Sony believes in allowing the members of each group to develop the innovative marketing decision which assist the organisation to develop highly competitive organisational framework in order to grab the strong competitive advantage in the international market.

Business-based division:

Sony also has developed business-based organisational structure which assists the marketers to set its marketing strategies based on the business type and product type. In this context, Butcher (2018) mentioned that business-based organisational structure is healthy for firm or organisations in terms of dealing with globalised business context. This organisational structure assists the marketers of Sony to analyse that what type of products and services are demanded by the customers in international market. In case of Sony, marketers focus on the three different business segments such as

Music

Entertainment such as game, device and network services

Pictures

The overall business-type organisational structure deals with analysing the strategies that are associated with product development (Hui et al. 2020). As Sony is one of the most famous global businesses, it focuses on analysing the overall product development process in terms of maintaining the good product quality for grabbing strong customer base. The business type classification of Sony is based on the fact that, in order to grab the competitive advantage in the international market, it is important for the marketers to focus on the type of products that the new generation customers want. The overall Business- type structure of Sony based on its product and projects types that is as allows:

Storage media business

Energy business

Imaging Product and Solution Business

Picture Business

Entertainment business

Mobile Communication Business

Home Entertainment and Sound Business

Marketers of Sony Corporation also focus on bringing innovative and creative marketing strategies and market decision through using the business-based structure which will assist the marketers of this company to improvise the products and service quality in order to grab customer attention. Through analysing the overall, business-based structure of Sony, it can be stated that, this organisational structure is highly relevant with the changing buying perception of customer and altering product and service preference in the global market. According to Miśkiewicz (2017), through using the business-based organisational structure, the marketers of an organisation can adapt its product development and service development strategies with the changing market trend which is important for grabbing strong competitive position in the international market. In this context, it can be stated that, through using this type of organisational structure, Sony is able to form different business groups such as energy business group and media business group each of which is assigned to deal with similar project as well as product type. For example, the Storage Media Business of Sony deals with manufacturing of different storage media products such as pen drive, hard disk and memory card. The staffs of this department will deal with several functions such as checking the manufacturing and delivery of storage media product in systematic manner, supervising the quality and electronic memory of each storage item and evaluate the overall benefits of each product. Therefore, it can be stated that business based organisational structure based on the business type and product type is highly relevant to the changing product and service preference of customers and changing market trend.

Geographic Division:

There is another organisational structural division, that is implemented in the organisational framework of Sony is, geographic division. Although this organisational structure is less important than business type and functions-based organisational structure, this organisational division is effective in setting innovative marketing decision as well as creative business planning while dealing with overseas market. According to Hui et al. (2020) through geographical organisational division, marketers of an organisation can classify the overall functions that the in different geographical areas. As Sony operates it business worldwide, it needs specific strategies as well as marketing design for each market based on its customer demand and market trend. Sony operates its business in the following geographical area:

Europe

Japan

China

Asia-Pacific

United States

In addition to this organisation structure will assist the marketers of Sony to bring innovation and creativity in their marketing as well as business strategies while dealing with the new market with completely new customers as well as changing market trend. On this context Miśkiewicz (2017) argued that sometimes the geographical division of organisation create functional and financial issues due to managing the different types of customers and market trend in foreign countries which can enhance the financial burden on parent company and can cause the conflict among the staffs of franchisee business with the staffs in the parent company. In this context, the marketers of Sony need to focus on setting strong marketing strategies for each country which will assist the marketers to grab strong competitive advantage.

Conclusion:

From the above-mentioned discussion, it can be concluded that, in terms of dealing with ever-increasing rivals in global market, an organisation needs to make proper organisational structure. Organisational structure of an organisation needs to be relevant to changing market trend and buying perfection as well as preference of the customers. There are several divisions of the organisational structure such as function-based division, business type division and geographical division. The marketers of an organisation needs to conduct research on the current market trend which will assist them to chose the relevant organisational structure in terms of grabbing competitive position in the international market.

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