Project 2: Conducting a Brand Audit

Over the years of operation, the company was recognized globally in manufacturing diverse electronics until 1994, when Sony released its first PlayStation gaming console. The company was able to carry out tests on its product before hitting the United States Market in September 1994. Despite being a new venture, the console would elicit critical acclaim while also witnessing impressive sales for the company. Since its introduction, Sony's PlayStation has been a reputable and top-selling gaming console across the globe. In November 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was still troubling the world due to the lack of a vaccine, Sony announced the release of its newest gaming console, the PlayStation 5 (PS5). Within two months, the company managed to sell 4.5 million PS5 consoles, making it the top-selling next-generation console globally (Reuters, 2020).

Brand personality

According to Davies et al. (2018), it is essential for firms to consistently develop relatable characteristics that their employees and consumers may be attributed to. This element sums up brand personality. Sony is usually keen to create products that depict human-like traits attached to their brand name (Dawar & Bagga, 2017). Overall, Sony may be termed a conservative, genuine, dependable, trustworthy, and entertaining brand. Additionally, the company boasts a brand personality that could be described as creative, particularly considering that its products are constantly changing to suit the changing times. Thus, the company's innovativeness plays a fundamental role in enhancing the company's brand personality.

Sony Corporation has been able to amplify the clients' expectations since the release of its initial PlayStation. This has then provided another avenue for its popularity besides its venture on television and other electronic gadgets. The company started building a reliable client base for the entity to grow and the customers to keep on buying their products. On the first debut, it was assumed that the product resembled other products with technical hitches. The company solved every mechanical snag straightaway. This depicted giving the customer a priority and zeal to expand with the variations in its client base.

Brand image

According to Brand Element (n.d.), brand image can be defined as the perception of a brand in the minds of persons. It is what people believe about a brand—their thoughts, feelings, expectations. This refers to the perception that the clients and the public have towards a specific brand. It relates to how various parties view the brand. One of the main aspects of the brand image is to instill a good encounter and promote a relationship with a particular merchandise or item line. An organization's brand image is paramount as likened to a personal image. The buying of merchandise is linked to the brand position on top of the act of purchasing the product.

Over the years, Sony has been dedicated to establishing an image of a premium brand, especially regarding the quality of its products. Dey (2020) argues that most customers perceive Sony as a highly reliable brand. In addition, most of the company's customers possess aggregate ideas, impressions, and beliefs that Sony products are of high quality, with the gaming consoles being no exception. Throughout its diverse operations, Sony is always determined to develop an image that presents the company as the strongest brand across all its global markets (Fortune, 2020). Thanks to the company's innovativeness and personality, Sony has managed to develop a reputable image in the minds of the consumers, which plays a crucial role in attracting new and maintaining existing customers.

Brand identity

Brand identity refers to the distinct and relatively lasting characteristics of a brand (Brand Element, n.d.). Brand identity relates to the inclusive image that an entity desires its products to form within the minds of the community and every client. Sony has been able to release five gaming PlayStations after its first launch in 1994. The corporation paused for 8years before unveiling the preceding gaming system to have an improved brand identity. The company aims at filling the globe with passion via the force of innovation and creativeness. The company's robust brand identity has seen it remain successful in the market (Le et al., 2020). The company products are a clear depiction of the uniqueness of the company. The company has embraced the use of social media to link with its clients. Social media serve as an excellent avenue for brand communication (Pribanic, 2020) to keep a strong identity. The company has also ensured a great link with the clients via its vision and mission.

Brand differentiation

Brand differentiation is the means by which a company's brand is set apart from its competition, by associating a superior performing aspect of its brand with multiple consumer benefits (Brand Element, n.d.). This refers to the way the entity distinguishes its products from others within the market. To ensure this is attained, Sony Corporation utilizes diversity in its products. This entails products that are unique as compared to other products in the market. Sony has been able to attain this by ensuring that their products are conspicuous as well as advantageous. For instance, innovation and uniqueness formed the key elements that resulted in the release of PlayStation. In its utilization of differentiation, Sony continuously updates its exclusive products aspects to maintain the competitive edge against its rivals such as Microsoft Xbox. The company ensures that its products are original for differentiation. In the application of differentiation, the critical concentration is ensuring originality in the bid to raise the company's competition (Press Release: Global 3D Gaming Consoles Market 2019-2023). Meeting differentiation gives entities the power and triumph within the market.

Brand positioning

Brand positioning is the designing of a company's offering and image to occupy a distinct place in the mind of the target customers (Brand Element, n.d.). This refers to the place a brand's client has in their minds anchored on the way a brand depicts its organization. Based on Sony's mission, the company aims at lowering the impression it possesses on its surroundings. Whereas Sony seeks to lessen its effect on the surroundings while provisioning exclusive products, their clients will concentrate on the level of satisfaction they derive from the entity's products.

Sony produces one of the global paramount gaming consoles in the eyes of its clients. The company products are depicted as of super quality, exclusive as well as appropriate. The company has a slogan in the PlayStation, "Play Has No Limits," which has helped in the brand positioning to convince the clients that the company provides what they require in gaming. The expanded accentuation on being at the leading edge of innovation has permitted PlayStation to extend its image from at-home in-your-face gamers to suburbanites and those searching for advantageous versatile frameworks.

Brand communication

Brand Communication is an important part and tool of brand management by which the companies inform, persuade, enlighten, teach, remind, and enrich the knowledge of their stakeholders about the brand, its strengths, values, fundamentals, and its offerings of products and services (Bhasin, 2021). Successful brand communication involves satisfied employees and enthusiastic customers. Every entity should strive to have the best brand communication to attract and maintain existing customers. The management's prime duty is to regularly communicate with the stakeholders (employees, customers, investors, and sponsors) of a company about the happenings and important matters of the brand because the stakeholders are attached to the brand in the most integrated manner. The stakeholders help a company earn its customers' trust if they credibly communicate the brand's values and positioning

To attain brand communication, Sony's engagement is not curtailed on buying any of the entity's products. The company ensures that this is maintained from production up to recycling the product or until the product has been eradicated. The company promotes staff involvement in planning to ensure lengthy participation.

The company has embraced the use of social media regarding the release of PS5. The company mainly engages the customers via Twitter and Instagram. Compared to the previous products, Sony dived into the platforms using posts such as memes to pass anticipated features of the products to their targeted market (Reuters 2020). The company also uses its website as an avenue for brand communication. The company clients use the platform to place orders as well as receive continued support. The company client thus has a chance to reach the entity at any time.

Brand loyalty

Brand loyalty refers to the client's readiness to buy a particular product continuously based on their level of satisfaction (Baird, 2020). Sony PlayStation has gained significant loyalty among gamers. A survey conducted in 2020 showed that over 40 percent of consumers prefer the Sony PlayStation brand instead of others in the market. Among the respondents, they depicted their eagerness to PS5 despite being unsure of its release (Gartenberg, 2020). The PlayStation 5 was launched in November 2020 and has so far garnered over 4 million sales. Currently, the company has no PS5 gaming console selling in the market with anticipation of restocking in November. This is a depiction of loyalty to the existing customers and gaining of new client base. The company has loyalty plans whereby clients can win prizes for buying their products. The company has witnessed loyalty by their clients sticking to their products.

Brand equity (including financial equity)

Brand equity relates to the value the brand has gained within the consumer's mind and the brand premium when compared with others within the industry. Sony's present brand equity has succeeded because of the entity's numerous products. The company is a leading provider of television, PlayStation gaming consoles. The company has seen a rise in revenue following the release of PS5 by about forty percent (Reuters 2020). Sony has, since its inception, produced superior products for its clients. Consumers are always willing to spend on a product if they are confident, it will satisfy their wants.

Microsoft Xbox

Company Background

Microsoft is among the leading technology firms in the world. With its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, in the United States, the company was incorporated in 1975 by Paul Allen and Bill Gates, two computer program experts. Following the incorporation, the company would start to experience a rapid expansion in manufacturing various electronic products. Microsoft's diversification into the entertainment, information and programming industries was instrumental to the remarkable success enjoyed by the company since its inception. As part of its diversification endeavors, Microsoft ventured into the gaming industry, developing the Xbox gaming consoles. In November 2020, Microsoft announced the development of the Xbox Series X (XSX) gaming console, a next-generation console with improved features and better performance than earlier Xbox consoles (Dey, 2020). Although the XSX is the ninth in the Xbox family, it is the first fourth-generation gaming console by Microsoft. Its design is such that the console it's the company's most powerful and unique in terms of amazing performance, graphics, speed, and cooling capabilities. The company developed the XSX to combat the inevitable competition staged by Sony's PS, particularly with the release of PS5 the same month as XSX.

Brand personality

Microsoft Xbox can be said to possess attributes that trigger excitement and capabilities that are appealing to its clients. Microsoft has been in a continued advancement of their products to bring out the best for the brand. The company provides a live streaming service to its clients when buying any Xbox known as Xbox Live. The clients can utilize Xbox Live to participate in games and converse with fellow players for live games (Fortune 2021). By bringing this aspect to its gaming console, Xbox has provided the brand attractiveness, zeal, playfulness, thinking, and required creativeness.

Brand image

The brand image includes the perception of a given product in the minds of consumers. The brand image goes a long way beyond the physical appearance of the product. It incorporates the perception of the entity to the client. Generally, Microsoft's logo comprises four colors in small squares to form a bigger square (NASDAQ, 2021). The colors have a meaning attached with orange insinuating busy, green the Xbox gaming platform, blue Microsoft window background; thus, blue attracts calmness. The fourth color is yellow, which implies bling while unveiling the company's positivity and innovation. The company uses logo color on its Xbox to indicate that the entity is not only provisioning communication services, but clients need to consider their gaming encounters.

Brand identity

Brand identity includes the distinctive features describing a particular product brand. This includes such aspects as style, color scheme, and brand logo, among others. To a greater extent, excellent branding focuses on leveraging emotions towards establishing a strong brand identity. Undoubtedly, Microsoft can be easily identified via its unique logo accompanied by the company's name. The design and colors used to make the logo are unique, appealing and easily identified. Such attributes have significantly contributed towards the development of a unique identity for the Microsoft brand. Additionally, the unique logo plays a vital role in keeping the company's visual language fresh and relevant, thus promoting the company's brand identity. As part of its brand identity, Microsoft is keen to provide attractive products to its consumers such that they are proud to be identified with the company.

Microsoft has also been able to adjust to the dynamic technology to maintain uniqueness in the market. The company launched its final Xbox Series X over the covid-19 pandemic outbreak. This was perfect timing as individuals remained indoors, thus more time for gaming. The company has been able to attain brand identity since its inception.

Brand differentiation

Brand differentiation includes the efforts advanced by a company or organization towards distancing its brand from rivalry by other firms operating in the same industry. According to Fortune (2020), Microsoft has embraced diverse measures towards ensuring that its next-generation gaming consoles stand out from those manufactured by the competitors. Indeed, Microsoft has a significant competitive advantage capable of curtailing rivalry from its competitors while also enhancing the capability to maximize its profits.

Additionally, the firm leverages diversification of its products as a critical strategy towards enhancing its competitive edge. This includes selling its products to diverse market segments for different gaming consoles with other components. This attribute can be evidenced by the recent release of the XSX gaming console that is extremely powerful and is capable of supporting 4K graphics and a drive that gives users an opportunity to load video games faster (Nussey, Naidu & Mukherjee, 2020).

To reach a broader range of customers and as part of its brand differentiation strategy, the company has also developed XSS, an all-digital, less expensive, and less powerful gaming console. This indicates that Microsoft is determined to differentiate itself from its rivals by targeting both low and high-income consumers. Paunovic (2018) notes that brand differentiation is vital in business. It provides firms with a direct avenue to develop their customer base because they have something extra to offer consumers, which the competitors may not offer.

Brand Positioning

Brand positioning plays a fundamental role in ensuring that the products manufactured by a business attract consumers. According to Howse (2020), brand position helps create brand associations in people's minds. Microsoft has strategically positioned itself in the market for gaming consoles by providing unique products like the new XSX, which is currently positioned as the world's most powerful gaming console ever to be manufactured by Microsoft. Thanks to the console's tremendous visuals that can attract many consumers and the exceptional transition and loading speed desired by today's gamers, this remarkable position has been realized.

Brand communication

For Microsoft, brand communication includes the various channels utilized by the company in passing information and receiving feedback from the customers regarding the products offered by the brand. Duhé (2018) notes that Microsoft leverages an extensively integrated marketing mix for its Xbox brand items like the XSX. In this regard, the company relies on various audience-centered communications like online and social media marketing, advertising, events, and experiences towards marketing its products like XSX. The company has developed a global community whereby it endeavors to communicate its values to consumers. The global community includes various social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, whereby the firm makes relevant communications to the target market (Duhé, 2018). Microsoft also releases video trailers as a means of communication to both the customers and the general public. The company has been able to scoop and keep excellent communication with its clients. The company offers virtual assistance to Xbox users via the company website.

Having a great communication channel about the brand with clients is crucial. Organizations can obtain client feedback and work towards improvements based on the information provided about the brand. Communication also assists in making sales either virtually or physically. Customer service needs to be at the forefront in any organization. Microsoft ranks top in client communication as they own many platforms which they can use to communicate to the clients. Overall, brand communication plays a fundamental role in making the consumers more knowledgeable regarding a given product, thus promoting brand awareness.

Brand loyalty

Brand loyalty relates to the ability of the clients to choose a product multiple times as opposed to that being offered by competing entities despite serving the same purpose (Baird, 2020). This includes the level of consistency depicted by consumers as they endeavor to purchase products from a given brand over a long period. Microsoft has operated in the gaming industry for more than 20 years, whereby it has been keen to create inspiration for creativity enjoyment (Nussey, Naidu & Mukherjee, 2020).

The capacity of Microsoft to continue providing its consumers with gaming consoles that consistently yield enjoyment to the gamers has played an instrumental role in creating a solid customer base within the market, which the company prides itself to this day. Even though Microsoft may have lost a significant portion of brand loyalty to competitors like Sony (Li & Xie, 02020). Although most of Sony's consumers are instinctively attracted to the brand, Microsoft's consumers are focused mainly on an analysis of the brand in terms of offerings and innovation. Nevertheless, Microsoft has managed to establish a strong consumer foundation for individuals seeking to be associated with the brand as they continue to use it. The implication is that Microsoft has won a significant number of consumers, with its innovativeness helping the firm retain its loyal consumers.

Brand equity (including financial equity)

Brand equity is composed of the brand's value as perceived by customers. Brand equity can be measured in both monetary and non-monetary terms. Over the years, Microsoft has provided innovative and unique gaming consoles to customers. The uniqueness of the Xbox brand products has played a critical role in keeping the consumers thinking about Microsoft's gaming consoles and potential future developments. Concerning Microsoft's brand equity, the company boasts of a very stable financial position and monetary value, particularly considering that the company is ranked second in terms of the world's most valuable firms, only behind Apple ($2,252.3 billion), at $1,966,6 billion (Statista, 2021). The implication is that Microsoft's brand equity is powerful, which gives the company a competitive edge over its competitors.

How Strong Are the Companies' Brands in the Market?

The gaming industry has seen enormous change over the past years, with various brands being introduced. However, Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox have great brands in the industry (NASDAQ, 2021). The two companies fall within the top four gaming console entities. The two products vigorously compete against each other. The two possess unique and excellent brand image, identity, personality as well as loyalty. Despite the two diversifying their products, they have a varied client base for the videogame consoles. From the research, Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation lead the gaming market (Fortune 2021).

Factors Contributing to Their Strengths and Weaknesses

Like any other business, both Sony and Microsoft depict their weaknesses and strengths brought about by varied aspects. Sony possesses the power of diversification of its operation. Apart from the PlayStation, they offer television and phones. Clients have been able to obtain all their electronic requirements from Sony. On the contrary, Sony has had a fallout in having an exposed database. The company should have a secure database owing to the idea that they offer a pool of products. Just like Sony, Microsoft shares the same strengths with a vast collection of product offerings. The company can put up with the changing creative know-how. Microsoft strives to be the leading vendor in every sector their products vend. This means that the company needs to put more effort to top the market.

How These Two Brands Are Competing Against Each Other and How Strong Is Their Global Performance