Hiroyuki Muto, the newly appointed director for sales and marketing at its headquarters in Japan, said recently that expanding production in one of the two countries would help

it bring down operational expenditure by reducing labour and transportation costs.

He said the company is studying the possibility of installing a new assembly line at its present colour television plants rather than building a new LCD/plasma dedicated plant.

Thailand has an advantage over Singapore, as production costs here are lower.

However, as a feasibility study on the two countries is still being conducted, Muto said no investment budget had been finalised.

Muto said although Thailand is not the largest market for their audio and visual business yet, it is the most-watched market for Panasonic of the 13 countries in Asia Pacific, excluding Japan. This is due in part to rising demand for LCD TVs over the past few years.

Thailand is now the third-largest market in Asia, following Australia and Singapore.

The LCD market has become more intense in the past month due to the upcoming World Cup and, like other major players in the market, Panasonic Siew Sales has been attempting to tap into the football fever.

At the start of this month the company launched its Panasonic Super Goal, Super Game campaign in an effort to find the Kingdom's best penalty taker.

Some Bt256-million is being spent on staging the nationwide event - in addition to Bt50 million on direct advertising - which was launched in Bangkok and is now travelling around the country.

Yuvanan Tangjaiyoo, senior marketing manager, said 1,700 people regis-tered for the competition in Bangkok,200 of who have already had their shot at goal.

The remainder will get their chance when the road show returns to the capital on July 8.

Yuvanan said the company expected 5,000 people nationwide to take part in the promotion, which runs until the end of July.

Among the prizes up for grabs is a Panasonic Viera Plasma television.

Muto estimated that campaigns by the major players in the market during the World Cup would boost sales of LCD and plasma sets by 20 to 30 per cent.

Panasonic last year achieved growth of 25 per cent, which was beyond its expectations.

To combat the expected drop in sales at the end of the World Cup, Panasonic Siew Sales plans to launch marketing campaigns for its other products, such as digital cameras.

The company has also increased its marketing budget for its audiovisual business by 10 per cent to Bt350 million so as to increase the number of marketing campaigns during its current fiscal year, which runs until March 2007.

All of these strategies are geared towards achieving the target of 10 per cent sales growth over the year despite many negative economic factors.

Next month, Panasonic plans to launch eight new models: four LCD TVs, three 42-inch plasma TVs and one 50-inch plasma TV.

The company has no plans to reduce prices on any of its televisions, but will monitor the actions of its competitors.

Nitida Asawanipont

The Nation

Chiang Mai