Case Study on Rising Sun Electronics.

Rising Sun

Toyo Ichiura had recently been transferred from the buyer Electronics to the Business Solutions Division of Rising Sun Electronics. The firm may be a US $10-billion company, manufacturing all kinds of electronic product from TVs to portable CD players. Rising Sun may be a household name throughout the world, known for quality consumer electronics products. Recently they need also become interested in serving business markets and established the Business Solutions Division to take their electronic know-how into business markets. 

Their first segments are going to be related to business communications and on-site security. Last year they sold about $500 million in products and services to business markets but top management expects these markets to grow in more than 20 % per year. additionally , the margins on business products are a minimum of double those in the consumer markets. After only about three months on the work as vice president of marketing for Business Solutions, Ichiura was wondering how he could perform his assignment from the CEO. 

When the CEO hired him, he had said “the marketing in our B2B operations just isn’t what it should be. Since you've got extensive experience in marketing for consumer electronics products, I assume you'll be able to determine what we can do to improve our marketing for Business Solutions.”

• As Ichiura began to review the Business Solutions Division, he came to some tentative conclusions.
• Advertising and promotion received little emphasis during this division.
• Marketing for every business seemed to be relevant only to that business, a self-contained unit.

The product managers in these businesses were deeply involved with their customers, sometimes spending weeks at a time performing on one large customer rather than focusing one common appeal to the largest number of consumers.

Ichiura decided to debate his observations with some of his more experienced B2B colleagues at RSE. When he described his tentative conclusions, his colleagues surprised him by disagreeing with them. So he decided to talk to a fellow graduate of Tokyo University he knew was now working in a B2B position in the steel industry. 

He was certain another surprise. After some reminiscing, Ichiura broached his subject together with his friend Yoichiro Watanabe. He reiterated his three major conclusions and asked for advice. Watanabe took a flash to look at the busy traffic in the Tokyo streets below before responding.

“Well, it's difficult. While marketing is named marketing with consumers and is also called marketing in the B2B world, there are numerous differences it is hard to know where to begin. The sorts of tools you used in your previous position are just the opposite in many cases to what should be done in your current position. 

It'd be prudent to put off your deadline for reporting to your CEO and spend some time with the major customers of your division. i think I know you very well and I know you will be able to learn the nuances of this new field.”