• Global Business Focus
  
  
• Corporate Solutions : Lesson 1

The issue

After spending dozens million dollars developing a household robot, Sony realised the prototypes had a lot of bugs and behaved in an unpredictable way. It was difficult to settle as a leader on a new market in these circumstances.

The strategy

Rather than giving up this project, Sony decided to change the image of the product and to transform the defects of their robot into qualities : rather than a household help that would not meet the expectations of its master, Sony preferred creating a funny mascot which nobody would request to be useful. This is how AIBO dog was born.

Rather entertaining than not offering anything

While transforming the bugs of their robot into « whims », Sony had the intelligence to market AIBO as an entertaining robot with its own personality. While lenient about AIBO’s eccentricities, consumers have enabled engineers to polish technology and marketing people to attract the general public rather than only the early adopters of technology.

A good positioning is the only way of reaching one’s goal

Sony have finally reached their goal : successfully introduce robotics into consumers’ homes and position themselves for the future as the leader in this category.
The success of AIBO dog shows the main role played by positioning to have a new product adopted.
Strategy comes down to knowing the difference between what the product is and what the consumers expect of it. If consumers consider your robot is only but a four-leg-mascot, much good may it do them.

Source : Youngme Moon, Assistant Professor in Marketing at Harvard Business School in Boston.