Sony's Segmenting and Targeting Market

Sony PlayStation market segment are gamers. When it comes to demographic segmentation, age, gender and income are taken into consideration. According to Sony, the main geographic segments of the PlayStation 4 consist of the Northern America market, the Japanese market and the European market. Sony’s demographic segmentation divides the market of the PS4 in male and female, old and young players and expands its business to a wider mainstream of entertainment. Such example includes most first person shooter games are rated M for mature which means that u have to be 17+ to purchase the game in store. Other games are labeled E for everyone, T for teen, and E+10 for everybody over 10 years old. Gender also comes in play when new apps are added to the console. Most cultural distinctions, different needs and demands of individuals, and diversities in customers’ buying behaviors require market segmentation of companies to satisfy their customers effectively.

Sony's Developing and Managing Products

Sony created the first PlayStation on December 3rd of 1994 and has a cycle of releasing newer versions every 6 years. Each console they released was innovative providing up to date features at its time of release. What PlayStation does it just improve performance, improve graphics, and gives a smoother more interactive interface. When the PlayStation 4 was being designed, Sony used developers to give them ideas on how to improve and create in a better timely matter with some questionnaires. These questionnaires used were created to assist the architect in creating a modern system that looked like a PC but was 1,000 times more powerful than its predecessor. Their results proved to be much cheaper for them to develop on a large scale resulting in a lighter, more efficient system that would benefit developers. As the consoles life cycle proceeds, the amount of power would innovate better ways to improve games and the use of the PlayStation 4 to its full potential. With over 10 million consoles sold to date, Sony’s development strategy has been more successful than expected.  

Sony's Services and Nonprofit Organization

Sony has always excelled by coming up with new innovations to improve its consumer experience with the console. It recently announced its long-teased online TV service, known as the PlayStation Vue, which will include about 75 channels for each market with TV shows, movies and other programs from major networks and local stations without a cable or satellite subscription. It will mark the first multi-channel television service that runs over the Internet and bypass traditional cable and satellite TV providers.  It’s Sony’s attempt to dominate consumer households beyond video games, turning the PlayStation console into an all around console.

As far Non-profit goes, Sony has been involved with other organizations throughout the years. Such noticeable includes the days following the Great East Japan Earthquake in which Sony engaged its employees and has undertaken a number of activities, working closely with nongovernmental organizations and nonprofit organizations to contribute to immediate relief efforts and long-term recovery. Also In the United States, both Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. and Sony Electronics Inc. received awards based on assessments of the maximum score of 100% in the Corporate Equality Index from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation as companies that create ideal working environments for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees.

Sony's Product Concept

This chapter includes aspects of products like packaging and trademark and product mix in which Sony provides a set of goods and services for the PlayStation. Some of these include PlayStation plus membership, latest games, Bluetooth headsets and controllers. Some elements were altered along with new products being released in order to satisfy the target markets expectations. Most noticeable change was the  $100 price drop on the PlayStation 4 compared to its predecessor (PlayStation 3 at $500) at the time of its release. This marketing strategy has been successful thus far due to selling more consoles than it originally projected. It makes the console affordable enabling Sony to make enough money over a long period of time compared to its competition (Microsoft Xbox one) which retailed at $500 at the time being of its release. Sony makes sure to keep their customers satisfied with the latest products to benefit its consumers.

Sony's Personal Selling and Sales Management

Sony PlayStation encourages its consumer to buy their product. They do this in a number of ways. Every year video game conventions are held regarding news on its product where executives come to discuss with an audience directly. While this is happening, Sony is utilizing personal selling. They discuss new video games, updates, and updates that will release soon and go on ranting about all the great things it’ll do and use the media to further induce personal selling. And in doing so, it’ll usually gets consumers excited and convinces them on investing on the new products. Although advertisement gets you interested, it’s usually the personal selling that gets the sale going. It’s important for retailers selling Sony products such as GameStop to train its associates to promote and sell so that it may build customer relationships and enhance a customer experience on purchasing. Due to this technique, PlayStation has been successful over the years in being able to provide consumers with its products and has excelled in meeting its quota. It’ll continue as more products release in the future.