Sales promotions:

Sony Xperia has more prominent promotional tools and they advertised widely on social media,
online and print media as compared to XA1. S also engages actively with their customers by
offering attractive rewards and invites famous celebrities to endorse and strengthen their Sony
brand. Here is a sample of Xperia promotional offer, Eid-ul-Fitr 2016 Smartphone Discounts in
Bangladesh
Sony mobile involves providing information to the customer over a variety of media platforms,
using radio, television and print advertising as well as using other promotional tools. When a
customer signs up on their sony website.

Sometimes Sony provides discounts with some conditions like credit card purchase. Transcom
digital provides 10% discounts to the credit card payee and GP stars. Moreover, discounts are
based on a corporate decision or the store that runs a sales promotion on the Sony Discounts are
offered sometimes during the peak seasons like Christmas, Sports seasons, and seasonal discounts
are provided as well. When competition is heavily involved, such as around Black Friday,
Christmas, etc., these promotional discounts are a "steal.".

Television
Much of the Television commercials in Bangladesh are borrowed from its Indian market
with successful results. For example, TVCs of Hritik Rowshan’s z5 in all channels have
generated a lot of sales. Another advertisement of Hritik Rowshan’s Z5 “Waking Up”
Campaign also aired during the first week of September. Though some local TVCs have
been produced, Sony Xperia – Bangladesh is relying on its neighboring country’s
commercials, mainly because of the Indian satellite influence in Bangladesh. It is, thereby,
cutting much necessary cost in the regional development of its market. Much of its
advertising is of subliminal format whereby it strategically features its handsets in the
commercials of mobile operators.

TV show sponsorship also played once a significant part in Sony Xperia’s ATL strategies.
It initially conducted feature appearances of its products in a bidding show called “Fate
and Fortune” in RTV, hosted by the famous local model, Azra. It has also been the official
sponsor of the much-acclaimed talent search program Rockstar, in keeping with its youth
target market.

Radio
With the newly rebirth of the Radio appreciation trend of the nation, Sony Xperia –
Bangladesh is paying much attention to featuring its products via radio channels. It is
expected that within the early next year, maximum FM Radio will reach all the 6 districts
of the country, its popularity having rocketed like a missile with just a few months, courtesy
of commuting listeners.

Billboards
14 Billboards are placed with sony z5 campaign around the prime locations of Dhaka city
and few in others outside Dhaka. With the increase of traffic jam, Billboards has become a
very efficient way for branding.

Press advertisements
Sony Xperia tries to maintain printed visuals in newspapers and magazines to ensure The
FM Radio and Non-FM Radio advertisements of Z and X series has been going on prints
in prime locations of all the major newspapers of the country. Apart from these, the
company also pays significant attention to gain full coverage of its press conferences in all major
newspapers and magazines of the nation.

Digital Marketing

Sony Mobile Bangladesh, the company has the following objectives :

• Grow the fan base and their engagement on the social media space.
• Make the customers and the target audience aware of the transformation of the brand from
Sony Ericsson to Sony Mobile.
• Drive sales by leveraging its active presence in the social media and through effective audience
engagement.
Moreover, The company realizes that there is a need for changing the traditional marketing
strategy. The brand Sony has been perceived as a youthful brand with its unique music and
sound quality. The company realizes that the age group of 13-25 years is the key target group for
the brand. The research reveals that peer-to-peer recommendation is the prime driver of
smartphone sales.

Problems/Limitations: The Global economic crisis is now a common buzzword in today’s

business world. As like many others developed countries Bangladesh economy also affected for
this. That’s why now consumers buying power is not so high that they can buy a smartphone that
worth more than 20 thousand. Now people want to buy multiple function phone but at a lower
price. Due to less buying power, many of Bangladeshi people look price of the product more than
a brand name. Moreover, In today’s competitive market promotional activities like advertising,
personal selling, and publicity/public relations play an important role in sales. However, Sony
Xperia has less interest in promotional activities then its competitive brand like Samsung, Apple,
Nokia and that sometimes hamper on their sales due to unawareness of the new model handsets.

Sony Xperia is not so much conscious about their product development. Lots of issues can
be found on sony’s public forum blogs. Some of the common issues of all Sony mobile are about
overheating CPU, battery life, design, CPU clock speed. Unfortunately, sony revealing new
models of smartphones without relieving customers from those common issues. Sony’s new
flagship smartphone Z5, XA ultra also have same issues. Moreover, Sony's R&D dept is not active
at all. They cant fix its existing issues and cant brings innovative features like its competitors.
Samsung has curved display and Irish scanner on its flagship phone s8.

Security is a big issue for maximum customers in the world. A few years ago a North Korean
hacker group hacked its database and revealed its customer's information into the market. Sony
the customer's word of mouth is getting negative day by day as they are not satisfied.

They are not aware of their brand awareness level and it is to low. As their effort in promotions is
lower then other competitors even they do not evaluate the effectiveness of their lower promotional
level.

Recommendation

Promotion: It is identified the most effective promotional channels are through the newspaper,
facebook, and words of mouth. So, their promotional strategies should be advertised quarterly in National
Newspaper on their Business Section. Sony Xperia should also sponsor in events such as business
symposium to build brand awareness. Besides that, continuously create in-house videos such as
“How Xperia XA helps you to ease your business?” and virally repost, retweet on Facebook and
Youtube. to build a stronger relationship with the corporate, it needs to conduct festive promotions
and post greeting cards to its corporate contact list to engage them in any festive promotions.

Product Development
As the technologies are changing rapidly, it should conduct once yearly on the product
development to find out the preference of the public and target market on smartphone’s features
and benefits. This is important as the demands and needs of the target market might change and
as well to find out if Sony Mobile wants to explore a new market.
Brand Awareness Level
This is to measure the effectiveness of the marketing communication for the past few years. It is
recommended to do bi-annually. Sony will be able to find out more about their campaign
effectiveness, and whether the right marketing message delivered to their target audiences and
stimulate desired purchasing response. The budget allocated should be enough to cover all the
regions that Sony has their outlets in.

Customer Satisfaction
Comprehensive studies on customer satisfaction are very important to Sony as this would
determine their customer retention effectiveness and how their customers react emotionally to their
brand. Word of mouth is one of the best mediums to communicate about Sony’s brand. Thus, it is
very vital for Sony to find out their positions among their clients. This should be done monthly as
they could engage more actively with the clients. This could be done at outlet basis and the
estimated budget will be lower compare to the rest.

http://www.mobiledokan.com/eid-ul-fitr-2016-smartphone-discounts-bangladesh/#prettyPhoto
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