Management Philosophy Structure

In 2021, we gave some thought to the future from a longterm perspective, envisioned the ideal state of society, and revised our management philosophy to “Connecting the futures of people and society with smiles.”
Considering the current state of societal transformation and social issues, and in accordance with the fundamental spirit of our Corporate Credo of “Thoughtfulness” (meaning “to always think and act in consideration of the other’s perspective”) – the basis for our philosophical system – our new management philosophy reflects our desire to pass on to future generations a “sustainable society where no-one is left behind.”
Based on this management philosophy, we have identified social values that we will create over the medium to long term, a management vision, and materiality (major challenges), etc., using “backcasting” from a medium- to long-term perspective.

Based on its new management philosophy of “Connecting the futures of people and society with smiles,” the Company will make every effort to create two social values by “supporting and strengthening resilience in our aging society” and “achieving carbon neutrality in the home.”

For our retail business, which mainly sells home appliances, we believe that there are two main factors that will have a major impact on what our future looks like. One is a declining birthrate and aging population. The decrease in population and the number of households and the increase in the number of elderly single-person households due to a declining birthrate and aging population have implications on issues such as changes to consumer purchasing behavior, shrinking market size, and a shrinking working population. While we are addressing this issue as a risk, we also regard it as a new business opportunity. For this reason, we have chosen to support and strengthen the resilience in our aging society as an initiative for social value creation the Company should work on to support the sustainable development of society.

I consider “resilience” to mean not only “restoration to the original state” but also “adaptation to change.” In light of the ongoing transformation into a super-aged society, we aim to find opportunities in the changing environment while adeptly integrating our sales know-how, through which we will create and seamlessly provide new added value.

The second factor is climate change. In July 2021, we announced our support for the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). Environmental problems such as climate change not only threaten biodiversity but are also serious risks that adversely impact the world economy. As a countermeasure to this issue, achieving a carbon-neutral society is a universal goal, and in October of last year Japan pledged before the world to aim for complete carbon-neutrality by 2050. With the frequent occurrence of large-scale natural disasters around the world, there is growing recognition that tackling climate change is an urgent issue. Environmental issues pose a risk for companies, but there are also ways to turn increased awareness of the environment into an opportunity. Through home appliance sales, we will popularize home appliances with high performance in energy creation, storage, and savings (solar power generation, storage batteries, energy-saving home appliances, etc.), and actively work on building a recycling-based society through the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) while contributing to the elevation of social values.

Based on our new management philosophy, we have established our management vision of “becoming a hub for the infrastructure of life through the power of home appliances and ICT (information and communication technology)” to achieve two social values. In order to create the two social values, we believe that it is indispensable to maintain and enhance in-home infrastructure, which is the basis of people’s daily lives.  Thus far, we have popularized a wide variety of home appliances all over Japan, through our home appliance sales operations. In the future, we believe that the progress of ICT and technological innovation will evolve home appliances into IoT appliances, and ICT itself will become a tool for advanced development of the social infrastructure in various situations such as responding to the declining birthrate and aging population, creating industries and jobs, creating safe and secure cities, and tackling the aging social infrastructure. We aim to become a hub (activity center or base) for our customers’ life infrastructure through our ability to popularize and spread home appliances and our ability to advance ICT and technological innovation.

We have established 7 materiality themes (major challenges) and 14 action items as important issues to be tackled in pursuit of our management philosophy and management vision. 
Upon determining these issues, the Company analyzed　risks and opportunities based on the perspectives of both investors and multiple stakeholders, organized the issues, and set long-term targets and KPIs, as well　as action plans to realize them, for each initiative issue.
By working on these materiality themes under our corporate management, not as a transient approach but rather in a sustainable and long-term manner, we will fulfill our social responsibilities through our business activities. We will continue to make our efforts so that this will eventually lead to an increase in our corporate value.