Matsushita products are considered more functional. Their company focuses on a customer intimate approach. Sony, unlike Matsushita, is considered a product leader. Their goods are innovative and highly technical. Since Sony is constantly coming out with new technologies, they are able to sell their prices higher than other companies. Other companies attempt to imitate Sony’s products and produce them at a lower manufacturing cost which lowers the costs of their products to consumers. Matsushita products, on the other hand, aren’t able to increase their prices to consumers since they aren’t as high end and demanding to produce. Their products have low demand uncertainty which means that they have …show more content…
With localizing material supplies Matsushita was able to save money instead of spending more money on the same materials. For example, polystyrene is a common material used in the home appliance industry. With that being said, the Chinese government established a national polystyrene distribution and trade center in Zhejiang province. The advantages of this center are that separate suppliers aren’t permitted to randomly raise their prices. Due to the competitiveness amongst the suppliers, this consequently reduces the price level. Though polystyrene is used as an example, several other essential materials are dispensed in a comparable method. Two main customer benefits include avoiding negotiation costs, and increasing customer supply chain flexibility. These benefits are the main reason that Matsushita decided to work with as many Chinese suppliers as possible for its operations in China. Matsushita former supply chain failed to take advantage of these simple profitable arrangements. Their previous supply chain was overall more expensive and less profitable. The expenses in their former method were higher from things like transportation costs and fixed prices. Since fixed prices were a main issue in their former supply chain, their new supply chain switched to flexible prices which reduced their overall spending by an abundant …show more content…
Having to spend less on labor and land creates competitive advantage for companies, like Matsushita, to cut down its products’ prices. Being able to cut down prices allowed Matsushita to stop cutting down its profit margins as well as preventing a decrease to their market share worldwide. Another advantage of manufacturing in China is that supplier prices in China compared to Japan cost significantly less. The Chinese government established national polystyrene distribution and trade center which allowed customers to investigate each supplier’s price then let the center publish an average price for materials. With the competition between suppliers, price levels decrease and the customer’s supply chain flexibility is increased.
Disadvantages of manufacturing in China
The latest digital camera on the Chinese market is typically six months behind products in the primary markets — Japan and the United States. Therefore, by producing these items in China, the manufacturer cannot gain any useful information for the supply chain-wide forecasting