Maynard said:
This question of perceptions is an interesting one.
I remember ten years ago I thought of Sony as a premium brand; when I
had to buy a TV or a VCR my default assumption was to buy Sony (and pay
a little more) unless there were a compelling reason not to.
A series of US-management-style clusterfucks over the last ten years
have, in my mind, completely destroyed that perception. Now if I have to
buy an electronics item either Sony just doesn't make something that
doesn't suck (iPod space), or I'll compare them with someone like
Samsung (flat panel, DVD player), and chances are Samsung will win.
The last Sony thing I bought (a pair of small speakers) while they
looked very cool, were basically all look and no substance; they were
too wimpy in power output to do the job I needed, which didn't do much
to improve my perception of them. When it came to buying some high-end
noise-cancelling headphones, the net reviews agreed: go with Bose and
don't waste your time on Sony.
I think Sony has been a strong brand, but their quality and business
strategy (iPod space etc) might have gone down lately. For audio, I
never thought they were strong, so I never bought their speakers. Their
TVs, had been great. I have very high regards for Samsung, whose
monitor I bought ~5 years ago, and was very happy. Last year, I wanted
to buy an HDTV, and two brands I considered were Sony (LCD Projection)
and Samsung(DLP). I was leaning towards Samsung to go with, and my wife
was leaning towards Sony (Brand name from past). Samsung looked great
when seen by itself, but we saw them in 4 stores side by side. For 55",
Sony was always a bit more colourful and brighter in all four stores.
Only the 46" Samsung was as lively as the 55" Sony, but we wanted a
little bigger. I asked salesmen to increase brightness on Samsung, but
it still was missing something. Now these could be because monitors
were not calibrated, but I couldnt compare them that way. One salesman
did mention that they had observed the same thing, and just adjusting
brightness did not solve that problem. I did not thoroughly compare any
other brand. I have seen some Samsungs lately and they look good, but
have not compared them side by side. Also, I have Sony CRT 32", and a
19" monitor (CRT) which are excellent too.
My question then is:
(1) The readers of this group are probably more tech savvy than average,
so would you say that you have followed my downward opinion of Sony over
the past 10 yrs?
In my views, its not as strong a brand as it was 10 years ago, but
definitely its a strong brand name. It got diluted by other brands
getting stronger too.
(2) Now, going into the wider population, do you think Sony has fallen
from a premium brand to just one among many?
I think its still a premium brand for general population. Recently I
saw an article that quoted that 98% of consumers would pay a premium
for Sony (in US). (Me too, but how much more will depend..) When I look
at a brand name, I also consider reliability as an equally important
factor. From consumer reports, Sony had always been among the top (Even
now).
(Oh, I suspect that Disney, in a different demographic, has undergone
the same sort of slide as Sony over about the same period.)
Now that their relationship with Pixar is ending, I dont see a lot of
good stuf coming out soon.
As for improvement of a brand, it's obviously possible. Apple has
certainly done so in the last few years, and before them I think IBM did
so. So I think Intel probably could improve their brand quality, but
also that they have reached the point where it won't happen with a
louder volume of ads, that it will actually require a period of
sustained products that are actually better than AMD in some way, to do
so.
From a marketing point of view, I dont know what does it take to create
a brand name, but a lot of advertisement is a part of it. For intel,
its not difficult at all, as AMD has virtualy no ads for consumers. To
create an Intel brand, they dont have to prove them better than AMD.
Brand name is generally the awareness of a name in public and not just
a very narrow select group of people, no matter how much better
informed they may be. M$ hired a VP from P&G to improve the Microsoft
brand name (~10 ? yrs ago) and it still is one of the best brand names
despite the bloody antitrust suit.