Company Profiles

The alliance between Sony of Japan and Ericsson of Sweden is geographical. functional and product based. Sony had a low sales performance before the merger with Ericsson in 2001. The merger immediately catapulted Japan’s Sony phone sales because the customers of Ericsson saw a strong alliance between the expertise of Sony and the Expertise of Ericsson. This is what synergy is all about (Anderson et al.,1984, 134) Synergy is defined as the one plus one is equal to more than two (Churchill & Peter,1995,192). The exchange of customer information, production knowledge and marketing strategies plus the established customer base of one alliance partner is being bolstered by the attachment of the name of its alliance partner when entering into the other partners’ established market segment (Ingram, 2004,63)

The alliance between Sony of Japan and Ericsson of Sweden is also functional. The features of Sony’s expertise in technology are being permeated into the products of Ericsson. In the same light, the features of the Ericsson quality products are being fused into the Sony products. The marriage of the functions of both alliance partners created a strong demand for their new products. The Sony Ericsson mobile phones are equipped with cameras, MP3s and Java games, clock, and other features resulting to the increase in the demand for their products (Solomon,2003,175).

The alliance between Sony of Japan and Ericsson of Sweden is also product based. Sony Ericsson is selling a product that is a necessary. It is one of the basic needs of man, with due respect to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. A manager needs to mobile phone to talk to the branch manager on the other line while travelling in an airplane. The production manager needs the mobile phone to contact the market manager in another city to determine the number of products to be manufactured while the production manager is in a board of directors’ meeting. The teenagers need the mobile phone to take pictures of his group swimming, dancing or drinking the night away. The mothers gives her ten year child a mobile phone so he could contact her inside the classroom to inform her that classes have been dismissed early and he wants to be fetched (Hughes et al., 1998,95).