Originally posted by mee Hmmm so they get a pass to say whatever they want?
That wasn't my point.
The Western reader may view those comments as vague, non-committal and evasive while to the Japanese reader, the meaning is perfectly clear.
And more to the point, the interviewee likely doesn't realize a good share of his meaning is lost to the Western reader.
We can rant and rave and say why don't they just say what they mean, but if our objective is to truely understand their meaning (rather than to find a statement against which we can claim we've been wronged), we may have to dig a bit deeper than we are used to.
I think some Japanese camera companies like Canon and Fuji are skilled in communicating with a Western market. On the extreme opposite end of that scale was Pentax - very Japanese-centric.
Now, Ricoh is much better in that regard, but it may take awhile for that more global sophistication to come to the Imaging group.
Ricoh has a different and more serious communication problem in my view. They understand B2B but suck at B2C (business to consumer) marketing.
---------- Post added 07-06-17 at 08:49 AM ----------
Originally posted by mecrox Top points. In addition, I would add that a marketing team can only present what has been presented to them. If plans change upstream, then the marketing teams plans must changed accordingly. All they can say is what is the case at the time based on the knowledge they have (senior management may not have told them very much).
I would think that quite a few statements made by Ricoh's marketing team have been overtaken by subsequent events. For example, the financial crisis at Ricoh generally seems to have led to a careful view of each of the company's business units during the past year. So it is entirely possible that statements made at, say, Photokina in 2016 no longer hold - a subsequent company review has laid down different goals and strategies.
There's no bad faith in this matter at all. It is just people doing their job - and much of that cannot be more than presenting a snapshot in time. The common thread here if there is one is differentiation. Pentax do what Pentax do. They aren't going to produce a camera which could have been made by Nikon or Fuji, so don't interpret what they say as implying they are about to. And exactly how and what Pentax do is dependent on goals laid down higher up the chain well above the marketing level.
Folks who expect companies to hold to past statements with gluelike precision aren't being realistic, imho, or they are pushing an agenda, perhaps because that's their job. Things just can't work like that in a highly uncertain world. As JPT says, don't confuse facts with aspirations.
Cogent, insightful. Thanks for writing.