At Home Mechanic

The tiny Transistor Radio imported from various Japanese manufacturers was probably the product that first began to change American perceptions about Japanese products. Prior to Ipods or Walkmans, portable entertainment in the 1950’s came from AM radios that could fit in a shirt-pocket. Just as the Ipod recently created a revolution in portable personal entertainment, the Transistor Radio (so named because they could be miniaturized through the use of the integrated circuit’s precursor, the transistor, which was so much smaller than the tubes used in previous radios) became a sensation across the nation and consumers snapped them up regardless of their origin in Japan. American electronics manufacturers were concentrating on the higher profit margin they could make per unit on TV and ignored the low margin market for radios, which were supposed to be made obsolete and supplanted by Television. American companies abandoned the transistor radio market to the Japanese who exploited the niche.

Building upon the goodwill created by the success of the Transistor Radio, the Japanese swiftly came to market with an expanding line of inexpensive electronic products that also delivered good quality and attractive features. By the early 1970’s, the American consumer electronic industry was decimated by Asian competition.

The American automobile industry made the same mistake as the American consumer electronics industry. The US Big made only token efforts to meet the small, economical cars coming from Europe and Japan in the 1960’s, but they preferred to concentrate upon the higher profit margin large cars that represented the majority of the US market. Although the first Japanese cars imported to the US were tiny and not very good, by the late 1960’s Datsun and Toyota had created cars that Americans could embrace. The American manufacturers tossed some Pintos, Vegas and Gremlins at that end of the market, but did not seriously consider that Americans would want or need quality smaller cars.

With the Oil Embargos of the 1970’s, American consumers were clamoring for good quality fuel efficient cars and the Japanese car makers were best suited to supply that demand. Every rise in gasoline prices in the US caused American automobile manufacturer’s market share to decline at a similar pace.

Just as the Japanese consumer electronic industry cleverly leveraged their advantage in a niche of the market to eventually dominate it, the Japanese automobile industry has also wedged itself into the hearts and minds of the American consumer. And the American consumer now considers “Made in Japan” to far superior to than anything American made.