Introduction
Although the global economy showed some signs of growth last year, the military action in Iraq contributed to increased economic uncertainty in this year, especially in the USA, and the year ended without any indications of a recovery. Recently, Sony is doing well, but under such difficult market conditions, Sony's sales for 2003 decreased approximately 1.5 percent and operating income decreased approximately 5 percent compared with the previous year (Sony Annual Report 2003). Last year, in order to compete with other companies in some certain markets, we decreased our price l…