The Internationalization Case Study of Sony

1. Company Origins (The Period from 1945 until the 1980s) In September 1945, a thirty-eight-year-old engineer named Masaru Ibuka, with about twenty employees and USD 1,600 of his personal savings, established a telecommunication-engineering firm, Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K. K. Another engineer by the name of Akio Morita soon joined the team. At the beginning,

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What Exactly is Meant by Panasonic’s ‘Core Business’?

1. Company Background In 1918, Konosuke Matsushita established the company known as Matsushita Electric Housewares Manufac­turing Works, which was changed to Matsushita Electric Manufacturing Works in 1929. The company has been using the name Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., ever since its incorporation as a joint stock corpora­tion in 1935. Panasonic now has 591

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Environmental Analysis in Business Practice: Strong in Technological Forecasting but Poor in Marketing Implementation

A milestone in the history of Sharp was its ambiguous strategic decision to start developing alternative display concepts for television set production that might replace the conventional cathode ray tube (CRT) technology. In 1986, the Japanese firm established liquid crystal display (LCD) laboratories within the corporate research and development group of the firm. Two

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The Phenomenon of Disruptive Technologies Applied in the Automotive Industry: The Case of Tesla Inc

1. Disruptive Technologies Disruptive technologies introduce a very different package of product and service attributes compared to the product characteristics of the industry mainstream. Therefore, disruptive technologies tend to be valued and used first by innovative and open-minded customers. As a consequence, ‘disruptors’ develop entirely new markets with new product and service applications, thus

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Delivery Hero: Instant Internationalization Through Digitalization

1. Launching a New Business Concept and the Role of the Founding Entrepreneur The foundation of Delivery Hero goes back to initial brainstorming ideas developed during a student summer project in 2005 in Sweden. Just a couple of years later, in 2008, one of the students who had participated in the project, named Niklas

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The Internationalization Case Study of Samsung

1. Samsung Management Philosophy – History and Today The Korean economy is characterized by local-market-dominating Chaebols with highly centralized decision structures that consist of many affiliated companies. Compared to large Japanese conglomerates (Keiretsu), Chaebols are generally much younger. The oldest, Samsung, was established in Taegu in 1938 (Chen 2004) by Byung-Chull Lee (Samsung 2007).

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Contract Manufacturing: The Case Study of Foxconn

In 1974, the Taiwan-based firm Hon Hai Precision Industry Company Limited, better known in Western mar­kets by the name Foxconn Technology, was founded by Terry Gou (Hon Hai Precision Co. 2013). During the first years of its existence, the company produced channel-changing knobs for television sets. In 1988, it be­gan to invest in mainland

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The Internationalization Case Study of LG Electronics

1. About the Firm LG Electronics (LG) is the second largest Korean Chaebol in consumer electronics after Samsung. Established in 1958, LG was originally known under the brand Lucky Goldstar. During the 1960s, LG produced Korea’s first radios, television sets, refrigerators, washing machines, and air conditioners. In 1995, renamed LG Electron­ics, the Korean conglomerate

Introduction to e-business and e-commerce

Organizations have now been applying technologies based on the Internet, World Wide Web and wireless communications to transform their businesses for over 15 years since the cre­ation of the first web site (http://info.cern.ch) by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1991. Deploying these technologies has offered many opportunities for innovative e-businesses to be created based on

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The impact of the electronic communications on traditional businesses

During the same period managers at established businesses have had to determine how to apply new electronic communications technologies to transform their organisations. As we will see later in this chapter, existing businesses have evolved their approaches to e-business through a series of stages. Innovation in e-business is relentless, with the continuous intro­duction of

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Real-world E-Business: HP.com

Ted Speroni, Director, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Asia), HP.com Overview and main concepts covered Ted Speroni heads the European operations of HPcom, as well as the tech giant’s regional preferred online partner programme. This practitioner interview highlights some of the challenges and opportunities for a traditional organization in managing e-commerce. It also introduces

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E-commerce defined

Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is often thought simply to refer to buying and selling using the Internet; people immediately think of consumer retail purchases from companies such as Amazon. But e-commerce involves much more than electronically mediated finan­cial transactions between organizations and customers. E-commerce should be considered as all electronically mediated transactions between an organization

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E-business defined

Given that Figure 1.2 depicts different types of e-commerce, what then is e-business? Let’s start from the definition by IBM (www.ibm.com/e-business), which was one of the first suppliers to use the term in 1997 to promote its services: e-business (e’biz’nis) – the transformation of key business processes through the use of Internet technologies. Today,

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A short history of Facebook

1. Context This case is about a social network, Facebook. According to its owners, Facebook is a social utility that helps people com­municate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. The company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph, the digital mapping of people’s real-world social connections. Anyone

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Business or consumer models of e-commerce transactions

It is now commonplace to describe e-commerce transactions between an organization and its stakeholders according to whether they are primarily with consumers (business-to- consumer – B2C) or other businesses (business-to-business – B2B). Figure 1.8 gives examples of different companies operating in the business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) spheres. Often companies such as BP or

E-business opportunities

E-business has introduced new opportunities for small and large organizations to compete in the global marketplace. Many commentators have noted that one of the biggest changes introduced by electronic communications is how approaches to transmitting and transforming information can be used for competitive advantage. A significant commentary on the disruptive, transformational nature of electronic

Business adoption of digital technologies for e-commerce and e-business

As managers, we need to assess the impact of e-commerce and e-business on our market­place and organizations. What are the drivers of changed consumer and business behaviour? How should we respond? How much do we need to invest? What are our priorities and how quickly do we need to act? Answering these questions is

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E-business risks and barriers to business adoption

Opportunities have to be balanced against the risks of introducing e-business services which vary from strategic risks to practical risks. One of the main strategic risks is making the wrong decision about e-business investments. In every business sector, some companies have taken advantage of e-business and gained a competitive advantage. But others have invested

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Management responses to e-commerce and e-business

A primary aim of this book is to consider the management issues when businesses look to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by e-commerce and e-business. How should an e-business strategy be developed? To what extent can we use existing business and IS strat­egy models? What are the main changes that need to be

EBay – the world’s largest e-business

This case summarizes the strategic approach used by eBay to take advantage of increased consumer adoption of the Internet. It summarizes its objectives, strategy and proposition and some of the risks that need management. 1. Context It’s hard to believe that one of the most celebrated dot­coms has now celebrated its tenth birthday. Pierre

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