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After World War II, Japanese electric appliance enterprises learned advanced technology from the West and achieved rapid growth during the 1980''s. The competitions among Japanese electric appliance enterprises were getting intense at the same time.
A format war describes competition between mutually incompatible proprietary formats. Within the history of the format war, VTR, DVD, and Next Generation DVD were the most famous cases. Therefore, in this research, I''ll use these cases to find out how Japanese enterprise can become advantageous in a format war and use case studies to find the reason of how to make a format become the de facto standard of electric appliance industry.
Through the research of these cases, we can tell there are three main factors that enterprise can dominate in a format war. First, the size of capacity is the most significant factor impacting the result of a format war. Secondly, the strategic alliances are the key to victory; studio alliances especially are the most important alliances in a format war. Thirdly, electric appliance manufacturers should concentrate on keeping the new format''s compatibility with the former products. At the same time, the new format should have brand new innovative features to gain the support from alliances and be accepted by consumers. On the other hand, after the format becomes the de facto standard, Japanese electric appliance enterprises are usually surpassed by Taiwanese manufacturers or China manufacturers. Therefore, Japanese enterprises should focus on the alliance with Taiwanese enterprises. In this case, Japanese enterprises can strengthen their abilities such as marketing in China and personnel management from Taiwanese enterprises, while at the same time, they can gain the ability for mass production from China to create a win-win-win situation among Japan, Taiwan and China.
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