Introduction
In this first assignment we reviewed an article by Wakayama, T., Shintaku, J., Amano T. 2012 What Panasonic learned in China, Harvard Business Review, Dec, 109-113. The aim of this article to stress on how multinational company, in this case Panasonic, tend to insulate their headquarter from emerging market, on the other hand, they are pleased to manufacture in these country due to efficiency and cheap labor. Panasonic’s story dates back to 1978 where Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping met Panasonic founder in Japan. Afterward, Panasonic begin licensing technologies in China in terms of modernizing china’s industries. Their main purpose at that time was to take lower cost of manufacturing in China. As time goes by, they failed to meet the market demands since Panasonic only put small effort to understand the Chinese market itself. They start to make a change in their organizations to handle this problem, the first step is they do re-organize and streamline the structure both in home and abroad. After overcoming the organizations problem, Panasonic learn Chinese’s lifestyle and use it seriously as the second step. Lastly, they embrace the tension of being multinational company to keep improving their business. As a result, Panasonic created solutions that create opportunities for both higher margins and greater local adaptation. China was no longer a place to make cheap goods; it was a key source to the company’s growth.
Body
The main purpose of this article is to show us how Panasonic are unable to use China both as a manufacturing base, as well as a market to increase growth in the company. But after extensive research of how the Chinese spend their money, a change in the structure in the organization, and a high focus given, Panasonic are not only able to use China as a manufacturing tool for cheap labor, they are also able to make China as another tool to expand the growth of the company. The author’s major findings would be the differences present...