Company Case Study of Technics SL Ltd
Company Case Study of Technics SL Ltd
Background
The company that I have chosen to look at is Technics SL Ltd, a subsidiary company of Technics Ltd, which is now owned by Panasonic. Technics main purpose of business is home entertainment systems but Technics SL Ltd concentrate their efforts toward turntable production. They currently produce 2 products, the SL1200MK2, SL1210MK2. (Appendix 1)
• Technics announced the world’s first direct drive turntable in 1969, the SP10.
• In 1971 they marketed the SL1100 direct drive system featuring an innovative design, which had the world’s first diecast aluminium case.
• In 1972, Technics launched the Silver SL1200MK1 direct drive turntable, which out shone all their previous turntable releases because of its superb handling and design.
• In 1973, Technics were awarded the blue ribbon award for the SL1200MK1, they personally thanked hip-hop DJ’s such as Africa Bambattaa, Grand Master Flash and Cash Money, amongst many others, for promoting their product.
They began to believe at this point that, the use for which the product was sold (mixing), was actually marketing itself as the DJ culture rapidly grew.
In light of this they spent little on advertising from this point onwards believing that this would achieve much higher perceived customer value. They realised that their market was very much a niche market, so in the same way that Ferrari, market themselves, they concentrated less on advertising, more on word of mouth, and invested heavily on research and development (R&D).
In 1980, Technics launched the SL1210, which was a black version of the SL1200. They had identical operating mechanisms inside both. Technics did this because they saw that most home entertainment companies during the 1980’s were bringing out the majority of their products in black. Technics understood that although the majority of their clientele did consist of DJ’s and clubs, they also had demand from consumers wanting a luxury product for home use, as part of a hi-fi system as vinyl was the most used format to that date. This option of black casing was designed to cater for this segment.
After almost 9 years of development, Technics released the SL1210MK2 turntable a slightly more robust, solid version of the MK1, built specifically to satisfy professional use. For this, they received The Gold Disc Award from the Spanish magazine ‘Disco’, which itself was dedicated to club culture, for their innovative quartz lock design which was implemented into the SL1210 mark two.
In 1987, Technics held their...