Why Sony MUST produce its own branded hearing aids?

So far we have heard about the new strategy outline from the new CEO of Sony, Kaz Hirai. Among the announced strategies on March 2012, Sony made it clear it that one of the most important areas for further growth of the company will be medical equipment business. Prior to the announcement Sony acquired Micronics, a us based medical company which is involved in the research and development of near patient Point of Care devices for disease diagnosis, treatment monitoring and blood testing, and also provides comprehensive product development for third-party clients. Also, the medical foot prints can be recognised in their recent acquisition of So-Net as the wholly owned subsidiary of the company.

Although we have not heard much about the details of the medical strategy from Sony, but those acquisitions can give us an outline from the strategy of the company which can be summarised as a B2B business including developing a new range of high-tech medical devices for doctors, physicians and hospitals with ability to connect to each other thanks to the solutions that previously developed and implemented by So-Net.

Why Sony is WRONG while Apple is right?

A quick SWOT analysis on Sony can reveal that the company has been successful in design and development of the high end consumer electronics while business segment of the company has not been so successful so far. So the question is why Sony has not focused on medical consumer electronic devices such as hearing aids instead of B2B devices?

Now a day hearing aids are among the most sophisticated consumer medical devices which need a revolution in the connected and everything smart era. Today hearing aids can connect to the smartphones or TVs but indirectly. The revolution in smartphones provides a variety of ways to improve the hearing aids connectivity with different devices such as smartphones and tablets for example using the smartphone as a remote control for hearing aids or using the hearing aids as the headsets or many other applications and usages.

Again Apple found it first! Not surprisingly Made-For-iPhone hearing aids features were among the new features on iOS 6 by Apple.

10% of Americans are hearing impaired and the hearing impairment rates around the world are almost the same. So it seems Apple again got it right and tried to enter to a new and untapped market with a strong support from its hardware and software background.

Sony and its Android ambitions

Sony officials have made it clear that they want to be the first Android device maker in the world. The acquisition of Sony Ericsson was in aligning with this ambition and they wanted to make an integrated platform based on Android to make synergy between their devices.

While Apple is working with hearing aids maker to add hearing aids in its ecosystem, Sony can produce its own hardware and add it to its newly created platform based on Android.

Sony has everything to produce a range of sophisticated hearing aids that can make seamless and wireless connection to every electronic devices.

Sony is the only one which can overcome the visibility barrier

The last reason that can support entering to hearing aids business which is the most important in my view is the most important barrier of wearing hearing aids, their visibilities!

Yes the visibility of hearing aids is the most important reason that people do not wear hearing aids but what do you think about Sony branded hearing aids that look like headphones or headsets?

I think many hearing impaired would wear them because no one thinks that they are hearing aids!

Also Sony has a strong footprint on miniaturize electronic devices and may change the whole industry dramatically by making barely visible, good looking and wireless hearing aids.

Sony's Japanese rival Panasonic started to make hearing aids last year. However, Sony'd strong potential in making high-end portable devices and also stronger platform based on Android can make differentiation from Panasonic.

So if Sony wants to change only one thing in the world it can do it now or never!

Techno Yoda insight: The "Integrated User Experience” a tough but promising task for the new Sony CEO

Sony is practically starting to gather its online services under the Sony Entertainment Network, SEN,  umbrella. Effecting from 7th February 2012, Sony Playstation Network, PSN, IDs will be transformed to SEN IDs. In September Sony announced its new "Integrated User Experience” strategy by introducing the Sony Entertainment Network and revealed its plan for combining and re-branding  its two hacked services Qriocity and Playstation Network under one roof, SEN.
Now it seems the strategy is progressing to the practical phase and at this stage the company is unifying more than 77 million user IDs of the PSN users with the current SEN IDs. However, The PSP users are not included at this stage. This will allow users to have access to the other SEN services such as Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited channels of the SEN with their unified IDs. In other word, through this change SEN will gain more than 77 million new users instantly! This number of users is lagging far behind more than 200 million users of iTunes, but it can be a good start for SEN.

The change is taking place ahead of the PS Vita launch and also the top management changes on April.
On Wednesday February 1, 2012, the Japanese giant, named Kazuo Hirai as its new president and CEO, succeeding Sir Howard Stringer, The Welsh-born American Citizen and the first foreign (Non-Japanese) CEO of its history.
Stringer’s right hand and one of the “Four Musketeers” who is promoted to lead the loss making giant has different and huge challenges ahead. Apart from the $2.9 bln loss and the ailing TV business, he should take care of the “Integrated User Experience” for network enabled devices including TVs, tablets, Walkman music players and specially smartphones to fight the rapidly growing iTunes, which has been one off the most important success factors of iPhone and iPad and can be a huge threat for the future of Sony. iTunes enables users to download music, apps, games, ebooks and more while SEN will provide music, video and game downloads and on demand services.
Apart from Sony customers, some of the multi-platforms supporting SEN services will be available to other manufacturers’ Android based devices as well. Consequently SEN is targeting wider range of audiences than iTunes which is dedicated to the Apple products users.
Although the new strategy for the SEN has covered three main pillars of the company’s entertainment services, it has not suggested any solution to provide ebooks and apps yet. Also, integrating other online services of the company under the SEN has not yet been announced. Apart from the current online services provided by SEN , Sony is providing several other online services such as:

•      Reader Store which provides ebooks download services for Sony eReaders and tablets.
•       Playnow by Sony Ericsson which covers downloading mobile contents for Sony Ericsson mobile phones such as applications, games, ringtones, music , videos and wallpapers.
• Myplay by Myplay.com which provides video, music, photo and mobile download related to the Sony Music’s artists such as Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, Usher, Justin Timberlake, etc.
• Online services provided by Sony Pictures such as trailers and mobile games download.
• Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), which provides online games and entertainment.

These are just some examples and Sony has several other network based services for its regional websites as well.
Bringing all of these services under SEN roof is a challenging and difficult task but if Sony can make it, it can be a huge threat for Apple and its iTunes.

How developing a clear and distinct Brand Personality can help companies to overcome the challenge of differentiation in the Smartphone industry

Smart phone industry and the challenge of differentiation

Smart phone industry sub-sector is one of the most competitive markets and has one of the fastest growing rates in the global IT sector. Now a day, the market has shifted from devices and hardware towards ecosystems, a combination of hardware, software and also online services. The major ecosystems according to the latest research by Gartner are: Android, powered by Google with 52.5% market share, Symbian by Nokia (Transferred to Accenture from April 2011) with 16.9% market share, iOS by Apple with 15% market share and Windows Phone by Microsoft by 1.5% market share. As Nokia has stated that is phasing out Symbian and has chosen Windows phone as its main platform for its smart phones, the main rivalry is taking place between three main ecosystems in the smart phone industry, Android, iOS and Windows Phone. Apart from iOs which has just one vendor, Apple, two other major ecosystems, Android and Windows phone have been used by several manufacturers across the world such as Nokia, Samsung, HTC, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, and LG. The main challenge for these manufacturers is to convince consumers that their product is more sophisticated and can provide more benefits than others. However, many analysts believe that it is getting harder for consumers to distinguish a smart phone brand from another within a given ecosystem due to the similarity in the operating system, software, available applications and the relevant benefits. So finding another source of differentiation apart from hardware design and product outline or any other functional factors seems important and even vital within the smart phone industry. 

Brand Personality

The brand personality is a construct which is related to the emotional content of a brand and concentrates on what the brand says about the consumers and how they feel being associated with it. Through brand personality consumers will be able to recognise the value its stands for. It also acts as purchase motivator since consumers prefer brands whose values reflects those they respect. It can help provide needed differentiation by making the brand interesting and memorable, stimulating consideration of constructs such as energy and youthfulness, and enforcing brand-consumer relationship.

Dr Jennifer Aaker defined brand personality as: “the set of human characteristics associated with a brand”. 

She proposed the Brand Personality Scale consisted of five dimensions and 42 items:

Sincerity (down to earth, honest, wholesome, and cheerful)

•           Excitement (daring, spiritual, imaginative, and up to date)

•           Competence (reliable, intelligent, and successful)

•           Sophistication (upper class and charming)

•           Ruggedness (outdoorsy and though)

Although Aaker's brand personality scale has been used by many scholars and has been the most popular scale to measure brand personality so far, it failed to fulfil some of the most important applications. First and foremost, several cross-cultural researches, including two researches by Aaker herself, proved that some of the dimensions cannot by generalised in different cultures. Also as Azoulay and Kapferer (2003) argued,  Aaker’s brand personality scale may not measure really brand personality, but other unrelated concepts. They suggested that lack of strict definition of brand personality has caused confusion among researchers and proposed their own definition as “brand personality is the set of human personality traits that are both applicable to and relevant for brands”

Geuens, Weijters, and De Wulf (2009)  by considering critisims against Aaker’s brand personality scale developed a new scale with compatibility with the Big Five human personality dimensions. By focusing on the new definition of brand personality which was suggested by Azoulay and Kapferer (2003) they tried to exclude all none-personality items such as age and gender from the new dimensions and suggested new Brand Personality Scale consisted of five dimensions and 12 items:

• Responsibility (down-to-earth, stable, responsible)
• Activity (active, dynamic, innovative)
• Aggressiveness (aggressive, bold)
• Simplicity (ordinary, simple)
• Emotionality (romantic, sentimental)

They examined their new scale in the US and 10 European countries and argued that: “the scale can be used for studies on an aggregate level across multiple brands of different product categories, for studies across different competitors within a specific product category, for studies on an individual brand level, and for cross-cultural studies” 

However, this new brand personality scale has not been used that much so far.

How to develop brand personality?

Brand’s personality can be created and shaped by any direct and indirect brand contact that the consumer experiences with the brand. Both product-related factors such as product category, packaging, price, and the physical attributes and also other factors which are not related to the product such as consumer’s past experience, user imagery, symbols, marketing communication, word of mouth, CEO image, celebrity endorsers, and culture can form brand personality. This is in align with branding process in the relationship marketing concept which is highlighting the role of different relations on forming brand image on the mind of consumers including C2C relation such as word of mouth. Susan Fournier reframed brand personality in relationship terms. She views brand personality not as a set of interpersonal attributes but as the relationship role enacted by the brand in its partnership with the consumer. She emphasis if we assume a brand as a person so we can assume marketing mix as the person’s behaviour as a result she argued that every day execution of marketing mix decision constitute a set of behaviours enacted on the part of the brand. She suggested a typology of 15 relationship types characterising consumers’ engagement with brands.

 Although any aspect of marketing may affect brand personality, advertising may be especially influential because of the inferences consumers make about the underlying user or usage situation depicted. Advertisers may imbue a brand with personality traits through anthropomorphization and product animation techniques, personification through the use of brand characters, the creation of user imagery and so on. More generally advertising may affect brand personality by the manner in which it depicts the brand – for example the actors, the tone or style of the creative strategy and the emotions or feelings evoked. Once brand develop a personality it can be difficult for consumers to accept information that they see as inconsistent with that personality. Furthermore,  Although user imagery, especially in advertising, is a prime source of brand personality, user imagery and brand personality may not always be in agreement. In product categories were performance-related attributes are more central in consumer decisions, brand personality and user imagery maybe much less related . 

 New way of differentiation

Based on the above discussions,  it can be said that brand personality as an important emotional content of a brand can have an important role to create differentiation for smart phone manufacturers within a given ecosystem. So a research has been developed to provide empirical evidence regarding the extent to which smart phone brands have established clear and distinct brand personalities in the mind of consumers in United Kingdom, which is one of the most sophisticated smartphone markets in the world, and measure the brand personalities of the market leaders by using the new brand personality scale proposed by Geuens, Weijters, and De Wulf (2009). Findings of the research will be posted in this weblog.