SONY WALKMAN

1.0 INTRODUCTION
With just 20 employees and 190,000 yen as their capital, Sony was founded after World War II in
1946 in Tokyo and was stated as a small company under the name Tokyo Telecommunications
Engineering Corp. by Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita. After one year they operated, they had
released their very first product which is a power megaphone and next a Japan’s first tape recorder
in year 1950.

For their long term growth, Sony decided to expand their business to global in the
mid1950s, and looked for a new name because the initials TTK were already taken. At last, they
change their business name to Sony Corporation. by combining the word for sound in Latin,
“sonus” and “sonny” from American word and thus in 1958, the name was officially changed to
Sony Corp. Sony launched its U.S. branch in year 1960 and another branch in United Kingdom
after eight years. Then, Sony expanded their business to Spain and France in 1973 and also to
German in 1986.

For now, Sony Corporation is headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. They’re one of the
global player in consumer electronic business as they own a leading position in the world market
and has a high credibility among their consumer with their high quality products. Sony’s founder
who is Akio Morita, said their company’s strategy is not to ask what their consumer want but is
to lead their targeted consumer with their new innovation or products. The success of Sony is
proved by a variety of Sony’s innovative products, for example in year 1971, they invented the
world’s first colour video cassette recorder, the Walkman personal stereo (1979), the Compact Disc
(CD) (1982), the Play station game system in 1995, the Digital camera in 1997, the Digital
Versatile Disc (DVD) player in 1998, the Network Walkman digital music player in 1999 and
further world novelties. and one of them is their Sony Walkman. All these products has bring Sony
to become a world class company that achieve more than $60 billion for their annual revenue.

No doubt, Sony owns a lot of successful innovation but for this assignment, we will look
into the Sony Walkman only and find out how they market their product throughout the product
life cycle.
2.0 PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE
2.1 INTRODUCTION STAGE
2.1.1 Product

Figure 1 showed the picture of first Sony Walkman (TPS L2)

In 1st of July 1979, Sony had introduced one of their most influential product, Sony Walkman (TPS
L2), a blue and service colour portable player with flashy button and headphone. To invent this
product, Sony had invested billions to the project and utilize 4 corporate laboratories and nine
development groups in their own research center in Yokohama, Japan. The reason Sony invented
this product is because their co-founder Masaru Ibuka love to listen to music when he went for
business trip, however he was tired of this bulky unwieldy TC-D% cassette deck. Thus, he
requested his designer and engineer to produce something smaller which is more convenient for
him to carry around.

The introduction of Walkman is very successful due to Sony invented product exactly what their
targeted customer wanted in the form they desired which is they can easily controlled their own
personalized musical experience in a single hand. Besides, Walkman combines the features of
portability (as it ran on two AA batteries for their electric supply) and privacy (consumer can use
headphone to listen to their own music) that made it become an ideal product for thousands of
consumers. The product also consists of two headphone jacks, a microphone and a button to lower
the music so that their consumer can share a Walkman with others and talk together during the
song.

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2.1.2 Price

The introduction price of Sony Walkman, the TPS-L2, is ¥33,000 in Japan while US$200
in the United State, but despite the relatively high price since the average monthly rent in 1979 was
$280.00. Even though the initial high was price, but Walkman has proved to be a very popular
device. This is because based on The Wall Street Journal, they called Walkman is "one of the
hottest new status symbols around" and noted that prospective U.S. owners faced a month-long
wait because of a backlog in orders.

2.1.3 Place

On the first month, Sony sold out 3000 units of Walkman only and it was not a good sign
for them. Thus, Sony’s marketing team decided plan their marketing strategy so boost their sales
and in August they sold 27,000 units of Walkman that proved the marketing team had done a great
job. Those tourists returned to their country which is United Kingdom, United Stated and France
with the devices, seeding the company’s expansion plans. Therefore, Sony had expanded their
Walkman business to Europe and America in early of 1980. Initially. Sony chose "Soundabout” as
their brand name in United Stated, which derived from the word walkabout, while "Stowaway" for
the U.K. However, due to the copyright issue and new names for each different country are not
cost effective. Thus in 1980, Sony decided to use “Walkman” as the global brand name.

2.1.3 Promotion

Before Sony released their product, there was issue from the sales and marketing team.
However, Morita overridden them and gave the go-ahead decision to the design team. As spoken,
the first month of Walkman released, the sales was not very good. Thus, the marketing team started
a unique and aggressive marketing campaign to create the awareness, they requested their
employees out into the streets and shared their experience of listening with the public by handing
them their headphones so that the targeted consumer will know the sound quality of their product.

They also utilize poster and video as an advertising tool to deliver the message to their
targeted consumer by telling them the benefit of their Walkman. The following visual are the first
advertisement for Sony Walkman and it only available in Japan.

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2.2 GROWTH STAGE
2.2.1 Product

To remain competitive, Sony immediately innovate their product to made improvements

and introduced new versions. They stated to introduce new model every or less that 6months while
major model changes that require the introduction of new technology occurred only once every
three to five years. For example Sony introduced new model WM-2 in year 1981 that offered in
several colours for their customers. After four years, they introduced Walkman that has same size
as a cassette case that bring more convenience to their consumer, adding features like AM/FM
receivers, auto-reverse, and bass boost. Every year in 1st of July Sony will organize special
anniversary for their launch.

2.2.2 Price

In order to open up the market and paved way for their cheapest model, Sony release
Walkman Model WM-1 that cost $100 which is more accessible for more consumer. Compare with
Walkman WM-2, this model was basically a bigger was a sort of a step back technology wise.

Moreover, the price of others new Walkman model still consider high which is $200. This is
because they own a great demand in the market which Sony shipped over 500,000 units of their
products over the worldwide in 1980 and tripled it in year 1981. Besides great demand, they did
not have any great competitors to compete with them. Thus, they able to offer a higher price to
increase their revenue.

2.2.3 Place

Customer from worldwide able to buy Sony Walkman from any electrical stores that bring
a lot of business opportunity to Sony and the same time bring convenience to the targeted customer
to purchase the product.

2.2.1 Promotion
In order to create more awareness to promote their product, they send their product to those
influencer such as celebrities or people in music industry as word of mouth promotion strategy.
Therefore they send their product to those Japanese recording artist, television and movie stars

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with free of charge. They promoted their Walkman by telling the targeted audience their product
able to give them the feeling of youth, fun and freedom as they can listen to their favourite music
anytime and anywhere.

They also utilized a lot of medium such as newspaper and poster when they released the new
model of their Walkman, tell the consumer what the changes are and convince them to purchase
the product and the following are the examples:

There are a lot of issues occurs during this stage. For example the latter feature caught the
attention of Woodbridge, NJ, which passed a decree in 1982 with nine others state together banned
Walkman and anyone from driving or riding a bicycle on a public street. There are also concern
from audiologists as they mentioned wearing headphones for too long will cause damage to our
ears. Even in those repair shops hanged sign and refuse to service the Sony elite as they mentioned
Walkman’s part were too small to repair. However, all these issues didn’t slow down the growth
of Sony Walkman while the demand in the market increased every year. Thus, it proved their
product development and marketing team had done a very great job

2.3 MATURITY STAGE

2.3.1 Product

At this phase, in the late 1980’s, Sony started facing steep competition from those
competitors as there were a lot of personal stereo products emerged and surpassed the Walkman in
terms of price and product features. Examples: Panasonic sold their Stereo-To-Go, Toshiba
introduce their Stereo Walky, and so on. Their product’s styles and colours varied from Walkman,
but several key features were found on early model such as two headphone jacks with the separate

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left and right channel volume controls, and a neat but impractical “hotline” switch. When the
consumer pushing the button, they will turn on an ambient microphone so the listener could hear
the noise around him instead of music.

Figure 3 showed the visual of Panasonic Stereo-To-Go and Toshiba Stereo Walky

In order to compete with their competitors Sony kept on innovate their Walkman For
example, they upgrade their product in terms of power consumption (only need wither one AA
battery or one gumstick type rechargeable, with optional AC adaptor input, equipped with tight
gap amorphous tape head capable of reproducing the full 20-20,000 Hz frequency range and others
more innovation. In Year 1986, Sony release Walkman-3000 that consists safety features such as
round edge and volume control to prevent user damage their hearing. Another worth discussing
model is the Solar Walkman in year 1987 as the consumer can charge their Walkman by lifting out
their Walkman under the sun.

During this stage, Sony also launched a compact disc player, the Discman, in year 1984
due to technological changes and for their organization’s long term growth. This is because the
invention of CD started to growth while cassette’s started getting obsolete therefore Sony started
marketing its Discman range with the name Walkman.

2.3.2 Price

As mentioned at above, the competition at this stage are very rival. Thus, Sony started to
lower down their Walkman’s price and execute price promotion. The following are the examples.

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 Figure 4 showed the price promotion of Sony Walkman

During this stage, the retail price for Sony and Toshiba is $150 per unit and there’s a lot of
consumer groaned about this. Therefore this had brought business opportunity to those small
brands such as Unic, Randix and Yorx that product those cheap personal stereos that came in
similar shape and functionality but not necessarily quality. They used photograph of people in
sneakers, on bicycle and roller-skates to promote their product and deliver the message of “their
personal stereo were available for everyone” to their targeted consumers.

Figure 5 showed the example of advertisement from Mura

To cope with this problem: Sony has introduced six different versions and one of them is
Walkman WM-22 that sells for S40 only which is the first cheap Walkman on the market and this
cheaper model helps to make Walkman mainstream at the same time assist Sony to consolidate
their position in the market.

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2.3.3 Place

During this stage, the place available is same as what we mentioned in the growth stage. They will
increase their distribution channel so that their Walkman was available in worldwide as there was
stil demand for this product in the market. Consumer can simply go to any stores to purchase the
Walkman.

2.3.4 Promotion

Since the market was very competitive, they had putted more focus to market their
Walkman and invest in video advertisement. In year 1986, Sony had released their “My Sony
Collection” and Walkman-3000 is part of the collection. In the video advertisement, Sony plan to
indoctrinate youth into Sony brand as the kids in the advertisement singing about they love their
Sony products and it end with a slogan “It won’t be your last” While in year 1987, Sony featured
a monkey named Mr. Choromatsu in their advertisement which able to attract the targeted audience
eyes ball, impressive in their mind and at the same time deliver the product benefits message to
their targeted audience

2.4 DECLINE STAGE

2.4.1 Product
Due to the technology change and there was a new audio device that played a new digital
medium called the compact disc to replace cassette as the cassette format was gradually phased
out. Sony released “Discman” to meet the latest market trend and began focusing their efforts to
this new technology and no longer conduct any development in technology for but some deluxe
models are still sold in Japan and South Korea. In October 2010, Sony announced that they would
stop Walkman’s production in Japan from that very month.

2.4.2 Price

Since the Walkman Cassette player is not up to trend anymore, they had decrease the price at
average $20 so that they able to lower down the their inventory stock. This proved that when the
product is no longer up to trend, their market price will decrease drastically so that the stores able

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to clear the product as soon as possible and spare more space for those up-to-date and marketable
new products

Figure 7 showed the price reduction of Walkman at decline stage (Williams, 2009)

2.4.3 Place

Due to the demand is declining at this stage, cassette-based Walkman had approached
technological obsolescence as the cassette was replaced by compact disc. Thus, Sony will decrease
the production as they still continue to produce cassette-based Walkman devices in China for the
customers in US and other overseas market but stop the production in Japan on 23rd October 2010.
This is because each place had different speed or rate of technology adaptation. Thus, even
Walkman had no longer a trendy product in Japan, but for some market or others country, their
pace of technology adaptation might be slower. Therefore there’s still demand for cassette-based
Walkman in certain country.

2.4.4 Promotion

As mentioned earlier, Sony had shifted their focus to Discman, therefore their all the market
research will focus on their new product on how to launch their product, is the product marketable
and the strategy to launch the product. Thus, during this stage there won’t be any promotion for
Walkman except the price promotion.

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3.0 SUMMARY
Sony Corporation is one of the global player in consumer electronic business and is headquartered
in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. They’re well known with their high quality products, therefore they own
a leading position in the world market. The success of Sony is proved by a variety of Sony’s
innovative products and one of the most influential product which is Sony Walkman.

During the introduction stage, Sony had released their Sony Walkman (TPS L2), and selling
at $200. The introduction of Walkman is very successful due to Sony invented product exactly
what their targeted customer wanted in the form they desired by combining combines the features
of portability and privacy that made it become an ideal product for thousands of consumers. To
penetrate the market, Sony requested their employees out into the streets and shared their
experience of listening with the public so that the targeted consumer will know the sound quality
of their product. They also utilize poster as an advertising tool to deliver the message to their
targeted consumer by telling them the benefit of their Walkman. Sony started to sell their Walkman
in Japan and expand the business to Europe and America in early of 1980.

For growing stage, Sony introduce new model every or less that 6months while major
model changes that require the introduction of new technology occurred only once every three to
five years while their selling price still relatively high at that time which is $200. This is because
they had a great demand and less competition in the market, thus Sony can set the price higher to
generate more revenue. They send their product to those Japanese recording artist, television and
movie stars with free of charge so that these people will help them to promote to others / public
regarding the benefit of the product. They also utilize some photograph to promote the benefit of
their product to their targeted customers.

During the maturity stage, Sony Walkman had to face a lot of competitors such as Toshiba,
Panasonic, Aiwa and so on. Therefore they keep on innovate their Walkman to differentiate
themselves such as they release a Solar Walkman in late 1980. During this stage, there was also

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some others brand release cheap personal stereo to compete with Sony and the cheapest is selling
at $20 only. To compete with them, Sony also introduced their cheapest Walkman WM-22 that
sells for S40 only. Sony also invest in video advertisement at this stage and they feature a monkey
in their advertisement to attract the consumer so that they able deliver the message to them
effectively.

Due to the technological changes, cassette-based Walkman had approached technological

obsolescence and was replaced by compact disc. Sony focused their efforts to new technology and
no longer conduct any development in Walkman but some deluxe models are still sold in Japan
and South Korea. The price of Walkman decrease drastically until average $20 so that they can
reduce the inventory level and store more up-to trend product. The promotion had shifted to their
new CD player as it was the trendiest product at that moment and no longer invest in Walkman as
the return of investment is very low.

4.0 REFERENCES
Haire, M. (2019, July 1). Time. Retrieved from The Walkman:
http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1907884,00.html

Holmes, C. (2010, November 15). Retrieved from Retrotisements: RIP Sony Walkman (1979 –
2010): https://www.grayflannelsuit.net/blog/retrotisements-rip-sony-walkman-1979-2010

Klara, R. (2015, March 18). Adweek. Retrieved from

https://www.adweek.com/brandmarketing/cds-mp3s-little-machine-made-music-portable-
163469/

McGarrigle, L. (2015, June 24). Pigeons and Planes. Retrieved from

https://pigeonsandplanes.com/in-depth/2015/06/walkman-history-sony/

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