Kodak and Fujifilm
Name
Professor
Business 302: Management Concepts
Date

The names of Kodak and Fujifilm are well known around the world. They are two companies that have made a name from photos, film, cameras and printers. They are competitors that started in the same business and took different paths. Though they shared similar products their management direction and company direction differed. The differences led one company to be successful and the other to struggle.
The founder of Kodak, George Eastman, was a photography enthusiast and wanted to simplify the process of creating photos. Eastman established what was to evolve into the Kodak Company in 1880. The Kodak Company was built on four basic …show more content…

It created an opportunity for Fujifilm to become the number one manufacturer in Japan and allowed them to make more export agreements and open sales offices in other countries including Kodak’s home market the United States. (The History of Fujifilm - Part 1)
Fujifilm did not enter the US market quietly. It introduced a cartridge-film eight-millimeter home movie system, which was countered and swept aside by Kodak’s version of the same product. To gain a larger market presence Fujifilm altered its strategy. It began marketing to amateurs and professionals about the differences between the two products, while Kodak continued their primary strategy of concentrating on beginning consumers.
To stay in the film product business Fujifilm had to concentrate on innovation and advancing the technology, so they could get products to market faster than Kodak. The new strategy included developing, manufacturing, and marketing comparable products on an accelerated timetable to release merchandise before Kodak was able to. Fujifilm became the third largest film producer in the US market by 1980. One example of Fujifilm’s business strategy was the release of the digital camera in 1988. (The History of Fujifilm - Part 2) In comparison Kodak had