Nintendo Case Study: Business Strategy and Competitive Advantage

This case study delves into Nintendo's strategic management approach in 2018, examining both business-level and corporate-level strategies employed to achieve a competitive edge in the video game industry. Internal environmental factors are analyzed using VRIO analysis, Porter’s value chain, and Porter’s generic strategies, while the external environment is assessed through PEST analysis. The study identifies Nintendo's sustainable competitive advantage in its software and intangible assets, highlighting the company's differentiation focus with products like the Nintendo Switch. The report concludes with recommendations for maintaining market leadership through continued innovation, market surveys, and focused product development, emphasizing the importance of adapting to technological advancements and understanding consumer needs.

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Strategic Management: Nintendo Case study
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s note

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Executive Summary
The purpose of the assignment is to identify the strategies of Nintendo in the 2018. The
assignment explores business level and corporate level strategy used by the company in order to
achieve competitive advantage in the industry. In order to understand the internal environmental
factors that impact the business VRIO analysis, Porter’s value chain and porter’s generic
strategies is been used. On the other hand, the PEST analysis is being used to understand the
dynamics of the industry in which the company exists.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Overview of the company............................................................................................................4
Internal analysis...............................................................................................................................5
Resource based analysis..............................................................................................................5
Generic value chain analysis.......................................................................................................5
Value Proposition........................................................................................................................8
External analysis..............................................................................................................................9
Conclusion and recommendation..................................................................................................10
Reference list.................................................................................................................................11
Appendices ...................................................................................................................................13
Appendix 1.................................................................................................................................13
Appendix 2.................................................................................................................................14
Appendix 3.................................................................................................................................15
Appendix 4.................................................................................................................................17
Appendix 5.................................................................................................................................17

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Introduction
For a business organisation to develop strategies and policies to develop the company and
to achieve the objectives of the business have to keep in mind several factors such as competition
in the market, the market scenario, the resource and capability of the company etc. These factors
can be divided in two categories: Internal and external business environment (Prajogo 2016). The
internal business environment factors are elements which are under the direct control of the
management of the company, the external elements are not. In order to develop the business and
grow, the management has to seek for strategies which ensure alignment in between the internal
capabilities with the external opportunities of the company. Furthermore, it also helps in dealing
with the weakness in the company and the threats in the industry as well. This report focuses on
the case study of Nintendo; the internal and external factors will be analyzed with the help of
management theories to reach a conclusion.
Overview of the company
Established in 1889, Nintendo Co. Ltd is a video game and consumer electronics
company, which is based in Kyoto, Japan. It is a multinational organisation which has made its
mark in the video game market. Nintendo is ranked as one of the world’s largest video game
companies (Nintendo.com, 2018). Some of the most popular games that have been developed by
the company are: Mario, Pokemon, The legend of Zeida etc. Over the years of operation the
company has gathered reputation among the stakeholders. The revenue of the company in
financial year 2016-2017 was 915 million US dollar on the other hand this revenue has increased
on the last financial year to around 1.32 billion U.S. dollars (as referred in Appendix 1). The

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company is a multinational organisation and the largest market of sales for Nintendo is North
America and then Japan (Nintendo.com, 2018).
Internal analysis
The resource and capabilities of the company shall be discussed with the help of three
elements: the stock of Assets or resource based analysis, generic value chain analysis
and the value proposition of the company. The internal analysis will help in
determining the business strategy of the company
Resource based analysis
It can be analyzed from the VRIO framework that has been analyzed in the appendix 5,
that the company’s sustainable competitive advantage lies in the software and intangible assets
that the company has (Schaltegger et al. 2016). Competitive advantage is the strategy that the
company employees in order to achieve an edge over the other competitors. Sustainable
competitive advantage is the strategy of the company that allows the organisation to remain in
the market leadership position (Fleisher and Bensoussan 2015).
Generic value chain analysis
According to the Porter’s value chain model a company has two sets of activities that
lead the organisation towards profit: primary and secondary.

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Figure: Porter’s Value chain framework
(Source: Author’s Creation)
Some of the primary activities of Nintendo are:
Inbound logistics: The company manufactures a number of products as well as invests in the
development of software as well. Nintendo uses the framework of quality control in order to
provide their customers with the best possible products and services.
Operations: The operations of the company ranges from production, research, administration,
finance, distribution, export and import etc. The employees of the company are the most
important aspect in this segment.
Outbound logistics: The company used the distribution channels to export the products in the
countries of distribution. America is the largest consumer of the company (Statista.com 2018).
The Distributors of Nintendo work closely with the administration in order to ensure distribution.
Marketing and sales: this is a function of the business by which the company connects with the

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customer and develops a valuable relationship with them. The company invests significant
amount in marketing strategies. The net sales valued to 4,366 million US Dollar in the financial
year 2016-2017 (refer to Appendix 2), however with the development of the software and some
of the features the company has been recorded to sell 15.05 million units of the Nintendo Switch
in the fiscal year 2018.
Service: the company has support and service department as well that serves the people seven
days a week (Nintendo.com/consumer, 2018). On the other hand there are also a number of
service centers all over the world where the products are available. Furthermore the company
also has a number of information on their website which can help the customers with their issue
on a basic level.
Secondary Activities that support the primary activities are: human resource, firm infrastructure,
procurement, technology. The company uses these elements in order to efficiently strategies
according to the above resources that has been analyzed to maintain the competitive advantage
(Liebich 2014).

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Value Proposition
Porter’s generic strategy will help in analyzing the value proposition of Nintendo.
Figure: Porter’s Generic Strategy
(Source: Tanwar 2013)
In 2018, the sales and the revenue of the company as seen in the Appendix 1 and 2 have
improved due to the sale of the new Nintendo Switch. The company has used the strategy of
differentiation focus in order to develop the product which is targeted to a wider market. The
design of Nintendo Switch is aimed at a wide demographic of video game players through the
multiple modes of use. On the other hand games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and Super Mario Odyssey etc popularized the console.

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External analysis
Political: Nintendo has to follow a number of rules and regulations based on the country of
operation. There are a number of aspects that the company has to keep in mind before taking any
strategic decision like stability in the political scenario, taxation, labour and employment, safety
regulations, foreign trade rules etc. As the company is based in Japan the company has to ensure
the international relation with the countries of operation and distributions are healthy. In 2017-
2018 fiscal years North America has been the largest consumer of Nintendo (Nintendo.co.jp,
2018) (refer to appendix 4).
Social: The target market of Nintendo is divided among dependent as well as independent
consumers. There are a certain restrictions and negative connotation in the society against video
games on the other hand Nintendo has products and services which cater to families and thus
help in bonding and spending quality time (Gupta 2013).
Economy: According to the annual report of Nintendo, 80 percent of the net sales are based on
global market (refer to appendix 4). Therefore it is significant for the company to keep a check
on the international economic condition. The video game industry is based on the disposable
income of the customers hence; the healthy development of the economy provides purchasing
power and thus boosts the sale of the company. Nintendo has gone through consecutive years of
loss (refer to appendix 1). During this time the international market had just recovered from a
major economic crisis. There were other factors associated as well. Furthermore, factors such as
inflation rate, exchange rates etc impact the revenue of the company. The exposure of Nintendo
towards fluctuations in the exchange rate as the company exports almost 70 percent of the
products to the international market.

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Technological: The acceptance and advancement of technology play an important role among
the people is important for a company that is based on technology. The mobile phone application
of Nintendo Miitomo was a quick success however; the application did not remain relevant in the
long run. However, in 2017, Pokemon Go became a world phenomenon and a social media
trend. The technology that was used in developing the game was augmented reality and was
based on the famous Anime series Pokemon that gained popularity in the early 2000s. The
success of this technology based asset helps the company to improve increase its share value to
almost double. But the company only has about 13 percent of share in the application. Nintendo
also launched Smartphone which provided the company revenue but this did not help the
company gain an edge over the market. However, the launch of the NX or the Nintendo Switch
proved to be the game changer in the year 2017-18 (refer to appendix 2).
Conclusion and recommendation
It can be concluded form the above discussion that Nintendo is an organisation that has
innovation, research and development as the major aspects that leads to the competitive
advantage of the company. The sales and revenue of the organisation has increased in 2017-2018
due to the release of their new Nintendo Switch. The largest consumer market is North America.
In order to keep up the leadership the company has to invest in innovation and come up with
upgraded features to keep the customers engaged. Market survey will help in understanding the
requirement of the customers and thereby develop focused products for the target market.

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Reference list
Fleisher, C.S. and Bensoussan, B.E., 2015. Business and competitive analysis: effective
application of new and classic methods. FT Press.
Gupta, A., 2013. Environment & PEST analysis: an approach to external business
environment. International Journal of Modern Social Sciences, 2(1), pp.34-43.
Liebich, G., Von Zimmermann, P. and Rapp, R., SAP SE, 2014. Systems and methods for
modeling costed entities and performing a value chain analysis. U.S. Patent 8,706,707.
Nintendo.co.jp (2017). Annual Report 2017. [online] Nintendo.com. Available at:
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2017/annual1703e.pdf [Accessed 23 Sep. 2018].
Nintendo.com (2018). Corporate Information. [online] Nintendo.com. Available at:
https://www.nintendo.com/corp/ [Accessed 23 Sep. 2018].
Nintendo.com (2018). Customer Support. [online] Nintendo.com. Available at:
https://www.nintendo.com/consumer/index.jsp [Accessed 23 Sep. 2018].
Prajogo, D.I., 2016. The strategic fit between innovation strategies and business environment in
delivering business performance. International Journal of Production Economics, 171, pp.241-
249.
Schaltegger, S., Lüdeke-Freund, F. and Hansen, E.G., 2016. Business models for sustainability:
A co-evolutionary analysis of sustainable entrepreneurship, innovation, and
transformation. Organization & Environment, 29(3), pp.264-289.