Sonance Case

Sonance itself was build in 1982 and gain their popularity once they introduce themselves with innovative product line of in-wall speakers.The past trend has shown that people had to compromise with special cabinet to accommodate speaker and take some interior space while Sonance offer an audio solution with same quality combine with minimal space visualization. The growth of Sonance is quite fast until it has reach point of peak success in the middle of 1990 and claimed themselves as leader in market for ‘invisible’ speaker and audio system.The segmentation of their customer actually is the high end user which less care about the budget spent as long as they can get very good quality audio and deal with the exclusivity or luxury personal home theater which offer by Sonance.

It become serious condition once in early of 2000’s when they have to face new entrants in which can sell cheaper and almost duplicating their product. In this competitive situation, they decided expand the market segmentation by entering mass market consumer retailer and production home builder. Without enough experience, good development of product and distribution channel strategy, Sonance has lost its true identity as exclusive high-end speaker maker even at beginning their target sales seemed increased and their market has expanded. Therefore it can be summarized that the basis of the competition is price. Lower price with best quality will be always a demand of customer. Eventhough they tried to balance it with more investment in research and development but it couldnt work well if they targeted to all segment market without fully understanding and well prepare of distribution channel strategy.The final challenge for Sonance is actually whether they want to targeting high end user with still focusing on exclusivity and personal design or targeting low until middle end customer and do competition in mass market retail channel.