Technology,
Production,
Marketing

Sony advisor Morio singles out three factors to make successful products

The Korean Academy of Engineering of Korea (President Yun Jong-yong) invited Dr. Minoru Morio, former vice chairman of Sony Inc., as a speaker at its CEO Forum at the Korea Technology Center in southern Seoul on June 26.
The Japanese speaker, who had been involved in the development of a string of well-known Sony hit products around the world, including VTR, stressed, in his speech, that technology alone can't make products popular. He said three factors should combine together to produce a hit product, namely, technology innovation, an innovative product development plan, and innovative marketing to produce a product first at home and abroad.
He said it is easy to think that technology is what develops a well-known product, but he learned that it is not so from his experiences with Sony. All of Sony's well-known products were a product of the combination of the three factors-technology, production and marketing.
He went on to say that Sony products were not popular from the time they were first put on the market. Sony founders, Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita, hoped that the tape recorder that they produced would be a hit from the start of its marketing, but it had not been so. "It didn't sell as much as they hoped it would,"the former Sony vice chairman recalled.
So, they targeted at selling them as audio lesson equipment schools after redesigning them and they became a great product around the world, putting Sony in a good position to become a world-renowned company.
They learned a great lesson that the product can't do it alone unless accompanied by a first-class marketing. From then on, Ibuka took charge of the technology sector, while Morita directed the marketing end of the business. Morio said Morita followed his own strategy that the company should make its own markets and explore them to be a successful marketer. "You should dig your own stream and let the water flow through the stream,"Morita thought.
In 1965, the two Sony founders developed a 200,000 yen VTR for home use, expecting that it would make a splash in the market, but they failed. A year later they put them on the market again this time with the addition of the functions for recording and replay, but they failed to take off again.
They tried again with the marketing phrase that "you can see the program you want to watch later,"and put them back on the market in 1976 this time with the addition of the timer and tuner, along with the pre-arranged recording function. The product became a hit a year later in 1977, the adviser with Sony said.
Morita in 1979 knew that the small recorder that his partner Ibuka made for his personal use would become a hit product and named it "Walkman"aimed at the youth market. The heavy headphone was replaced with a lighter earphone and put it on the market and it sold 100 million units in the next decade. In 1985, Morita launched the sale of a mobile video camera, but again the venture failed. So Sony made it smaller and lighter with all kinds of functions and launched its marketing in 1989 with the name of 'TR 55'and the product swept 50 percent of the video camera market in the world.
Morio reemphasized that companies should think about commercialization of the new technology, and how it would change customers lives, in addition to production and marketing. He said customers don't want cheap products, but ones with high quality and low price tags. They should think about technology that will boost customers pride and have feel the price for the product was reasonable. nw

Dr. Minoru Morio, advisor to Sony Inc. delivers a speech at the CEO Forum at the Korea Technology Center in Seoul June 26.