Introduction

JBL is a company based out of Los Angeles, California that since 1946 has worked on building speakers, headphones, and other audio electronic equipment, founded by James Bullough Lansing, a prodigy engineer who built radio antennas by himself at the age of 12 and later through his life worked on multiple pieces of technology for others, up until he founded JBL, whose first ever speaker was a loud speaker intended for concerts and movies. Lansing’s first speaker was quite successful, and over time JBL developed an arsenal of audio products. The company built a brand known for high quality audio products that were sold around between multiple companies up until it eventually was acquired by Harman International, a company that also owns the audio brand Harman Kardon. In 2016, Harman International was acquired by Samsung, after which the brand proceeded to grow into what it is today, a household audio brand that is known for selling high quality and practical audio products. The JBL brand’s product line consists of headphones and speakers at a variety of different price points. JBL as of today is a household audio brand around the world that currently takes 5th place in headphones market share.

JBL has built a brand for itself that is doing generally good, but still has a lot of room to do better when compared to other large players in the headphones market. JBL as of 2023 celebrated being able to sell 200 million headphones, but was also only able to get a market share of 11.3 percent. This means with JBL’s parent company Samsung’s market share of 12.2 percent, the total market share of Samsung’s 2 brands in the headphones market is 23.6 percent. This market share looks good on paper when left alone, but looks pretty miniscule when compared to Apple and Beats By Dre’s combined 49.7 percent of the headphones market and Bose’s ability to beat the individual market share of JBL and Samsung with its market share of 12.5 percent. JBL has been able to beat the market share of Sony and SkullCandy, but is still tagging behind the empire Apple has built in the headphones market, where Apple and Beats By Dre are able to charge high brand premiums, something JBL is still struggling to have with Bose also being able to get a higher market share and charge a higher brand premium. Take for example the market for premium over ear headphones, where Bose sell the Quiet Comfort for $249 , Beat by Dre sells the Beat Studio 3 for $169, and JBL sells their Live 760NC for only $129.95, a price that is significantly lower than that of Bose and Beats by Dre.

JBL is clearly not in bad shape, but it is capable of doing better, with the market share of Apple and Beats by Dre being double that of Samsung and JBL. Samsung and JBL together have nearly a quarter of the market share in the headphones market, but Apple and Beat by Dre together are able to have nearly half, furthermore, JBL could benefit from growing its brand. According to Brandwatch.com, Apple as of today has the highest brand value of any company in the tech market and their audio exclusive brand Beats By Dre has been able to also take on the 26th spot. JBL is one below that of Beats by Dre, and Samsung takes the 4th place. When it comes to audio exclusive brands, Bose has been able to outrank both Beats By Dre and JBL, taking the 25th spot, which has allowed it to beat JBL in terms of market share, but not Beats By Dre, which is likely a result of the brand being positioned as an Apple owned brand and marketed closely with Apple products. Beats by Dre headphones have been able to integrate seamlessly with Apple products the same way Apple’s own Airpods line does, they are sold in Apple stores alongside Apple’s airpods line, are available as a part of Apple’s back to school promo for purchasing iPads and Macbooks, and share the generally minimalist design language of Apple, that furthermore leads to Apple and Beats By Dre’s combined branding strategy leading them to the top of the headphones market.

JBL has a rich history of making high quality audio products, and if it is able to improve its brand image, it will be able to grow the overall market share of Samsung within the speaker market and eat into the near half of the pie market share that Apple has. Apple and Beats By Dre have been able to dominate the market and Bose has also been able to dominate JBL in the headphones market. Furthermore, JBL should look into improving their brand image, so that they can charge a higher brand premium that will in turn lead to increased market share.

Conjoint Analysis

In order to better understand how a consumer treats each of the different brands, I conducted a conjoint analysis using the Sawtooth software, where I studied the effect of Price, average rating on Amazon, Brand, and battery life’s effect on a consumer's utility of each of the products. Conjoint analysis can individually study the effect of different product attributes like battery life of wireless headphones or average rating on amazon, and see how the value of one of those attributes will generally affect the overall perception of the brand. The survey was only taken by me, but still is a good way to better understand the effect of each product and it’s overall utility compared to the utility provided from the brand.

Upon completion of the survey, we see that generally the most important attributes are brand and battery life and surprisingly the brand comes last, which I believe is likely due to the fact that in this survey the brand is portrayed as simply the title of the brand, while in reality a brand includes factors like design which effect the perception of a product on first sight. On top of this, this survey has only been taken by one person, and therefore brand awareness can't be accounted for though in reality it's a very important factor that plays into the success of a brand, as some consumers may not be aware of JBL or Bose headphones but are aware of Beats by Dre, due to their brand identity being associated with that of Apple. On top of this, the survey also doesn't account for how visible the other attributes realistically, like battery life and the average rating on Amazon, as these attributes on the survey take account for advertising through providing information on products, meanwhile purchase decision in real life would simply be influenced by how glorified a product was for a consumer by either advertisements or word of mouth.

Now to further understand this, we can look at the utility of each product and compare it to the price, where we can see that the JBL wins when it comes to overall utility, and when it specifically comes to the amount of utility that you get per dollar spent, as the JBL is also the company that sells the cheapest pair of headphones. I'm getting into the specifics of every attribute, we see that Beats by Dre is by far the strongest in terms of brand, but when it comes to battery life, JBL is the clear winner as 50 hours of battery life creates a lot more utility than the amount that is created by 24 hours of battery life, and when battery life goes down to 22 hours, the utility value becomes negative. In terms of price though, Beats by Dre is the winner, Even though their headphones cost more than the JBL headphones, the survey ranks their price utility higher with both JBL and Beats by Dre having positive values, and both having a negative value due to it being the costliest, but in reality though, the JBL headphones likely have a higher utility value for their price, though it is also possible that these headphones, being the higher end model of their band, can be viewed as luxury goods, items that tend to have a rise in demand when their price increases, given consumers sometimes may associate price with quality and items of social status. Amazon ratings lastly show that the 4.5 rating when compared alongside a 4.6 and 4.7 leads to negative utility, and the 4.7 is able to have a true impact utility wise, while the 4.6 is also positive, but less than half that of the 4.7 rating.  Lastly, there is also the final choice which is the option of saying none when looking at options, and in this case we can ignore it, as I did not answer it in the survey.

In order to better understand this, we can also conduct further analysis by doing simulations comparing the potential effect of all attributes on the overall market share. To begin with, let’s see what the current market share is going to be according to the simulation, where Bose gets zero percent of the market share, Beats by Dre gets 15.37 percent and JBL get’s 84.6 percent, a potential utopia for JBL in terms of market share that is caused by the survey results unfortunately not being able to test the attributes in the most accurate way. Beats by Dre’s brand utility does have an effect in the simulation, giving it the ability to gain some market share that exists, while Bose has none at all.

Now to evaluate the power of Beats by Dre and their branding, and  the fact that their price of $169 appeared to be preferred by consumers according to the survey, let’s see a scenario where the JBL has a battery life of 22 hours, what the Beats Studio 3 has, and the Beat Studio 3 has the 50 hours battery life of the. As per the simulation, we can see that the survey now shows the power of the By Dre Brand and their having the highest review, as now with their having the highest battery life also, it is clear that  they are the winner. Looking to see what if Bose had the highest battery life and everything else was the same, we see that Bose finally has a visible market share of 3.32 percent, Beats by Dre has a behemoth market share of 76.2 percent, and finally JBL has a market share of 19.99 percent.

On top of this, JBL as a company could try to do better in terms of its overall sound quality and build quality while sacrificing battery life to be maybe 35 hours, as the company could potentially get better reviews based on the improved sound quality and build quality that could in turn improve their market share. This is a decision that can’t be made without a true analysis where we compare the marginal cost of less battery life and how much money it saves, something I don’t have enough information to find out, and compare it with the potential benefit of having better sound quality and build quality, for which you also need to accurately evaluate the effect on customer reviews. This hypothetical situation can be in fact tested through the means of making JBL have a review of 4.7, the same as Beats by Dre, and have a battery life of only 35 hours, compared to their regular 50 hours. The results indicate that JBL grew to have a 98.03 percent market share, while Beats by Dre had a market share of only 1.97 percent, as Bose had none at all. This together indicates that JBL could potentially get a higher market share by prioritizing sound quality and build quality over battery life.

Conclusion

Finally, JBL has the overall potential to be able to hold a higher market share within the headphones market, and at least be able to hold a higher market share than their owner, Samsung, as they have an accurate history within the audio industry, with a reputation known for building high-quality headphones and speakers, unlike Samsung, which does have a generally substantial brand value within the electronic space, but not within the specific area of audio electronics. Though the survey suggests otherwise, Apple and Beats by Dre will continue to dominate the market, but JBL will at least be able to hold a higher market share than it currently has. JBL could begin with improved advertising, which would assist with brand awareness. JBL offers headphones with more battery life than Beats by Dre, and both provide headphones I have yet to test. It could have as good sound quality as the other headphones. Beats by Dre can hold a higher market sure than them because of its brand value and its association with Apple, a company with an even higher brand value. The conjoint analysis survey indicated that some of JBL's features set them apart. Therefore, they must make flashy advertisements in which they communicate these ideas to their customers, as the conjoint analysis survey showed that price and having a higher battery life than their competition was able to assist them in differentiating themselves from their competition. JBL could enter the market as a cheaper alternative to high-end Beats by Dre and Bose headphones, allowing them to raise their price slightly but still keep it lower than their competition. Their advertising strategy must target the segment of people interested in buying cheaper alternatives to popular products, for example, the smartphone company OnePlus, whose entire business model was focused on making smartphones that were more affordable alternatives to smartphones that Apple and Samsung make. Furthermore, JBL has the potential to grow its market share within the headphones market. Still, they need to improve their advertising and overall brand awareness and have a clear and cut-out brand identity to do it. The brand identity and communication of attributes are very important to the success of products, as the JBL headphones are cheaper than both, and Beats by Dre headphones have features that seem as good or better than their competition. Therefore, they must take advantage of this and advertise themselves as a cheaper alternative to other headphones brands that offer the same or better performance.

Work Cited:

Harman. “JBL Hits 200 Million Headphones Milestone.” PR Newswire: News Distribution, Targeting and Monitoring, 15 Dec. 2022 www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/jbl-hits-200-million-headphones-milestone-301703936.html#:~:text=This%20unprecedented%20momentum%20is%20evident,in%20volume%20share%20in%20Q2.

Richter, Felix. “Apple Dominates the U.S. Headphone Market.” Statista Daily Data, 7 Feb. 2022, www.statista.com/chart/26791/most-popular-headphone-brands-in-the-us.

“The Brandwatch Index.” Brandwatch, www.brandwatch.com/brandwatch-index/consumer-electronics.