Sorry in advance; this turned out to be a long, boring post:
I'm not all that familiar with Olympus's worldwide corporate structure, but nearly all multi-national corporations work more or less the same way, so we can make some very safe assumptions.
In all, or nearly all, of the large markets, Olympus Japan almost undoubtedly distributes through wholly-owned subsidiary corporations. This is definitely the case in the U.S. Olympus America is a separate corporation, but effectively all of its shares are owned by Olympus Japan. Olympus America's financial results are even "consolidated" into the financial results of Olympus Japan -- i.e. if Olympus America makes a profit this year, the profit will be shown on the corporate financial report of Olympus Japan. Olympus America may have to pay corporate income taxes on its profits in the U.S., however (I'm not sure of the rules on this).
This structure is required because Olympus must have a legal business entity in the U.S. in order to do business here, and that must be a U.S. chartered corporation. It can enter into contracts, open accounts in U.S. banks, hire employees, pay payroll witholding taxes for its employees (nearly all of whom are, of course, U.S. citizens) etc. etc.
How much independence these wholly-owned subsidiaries have varies, I'm sure, from corporation to corporation, but they certainly have a lot of independence in settings sales and marketing strategies, and even, to some extent, in deciding what products to sell or not to sell. This just makes sense: how would executives in Japan know, for example, what would be a good TV commercial here in the U.S., or what would look stupid to American viewers? They don't. They rely on their U.S. subsidiary, staffed by Americans, to figure out what works in the U.S. And the subsidiary will indeed set up and operate (and pay for) repair centers, customer support, and they will generate and pay for all marketing, sales, and advertising activity within their distribution area. These are the costs that must be covered by the distributor's profit margin.
But ultimately, the Japanese call the shots -- the top executives at both Olympus America and Nikon USA right now are Japanese, sent to the U.S. to oversee operations (usually they serve five-year stints). If Olympus Japan makes a polka-dotted camera that Japanese schoolgirls love, and the U.S. subsidiary says "we can't sell that here", they'll probably trust that the Americans are right. But if push comes to shove, they can say "you're going to take 50,000 of them anyway, and you better figure out how to sell them." And the U.S. can't say no. I saw this sort of tension between Nikon USA and Nikon Japan all the time when I worked for Nikon USA. But obviously, there is close cooperation between, say, Olympus Japan and Olympus America (which is undoubtedly by far its biggest subsidiary). When I worked at Nikon USA, our top sales and marketing executives made about four trips a year to Japan to discuss strategy and tactics, and I'm sure it wasn't just a one-way conversation.
Now, in smaller markets, many companies the size of Olympus and Nikon distribute their products through independent import/export companies in whom they may have no ownership stake. This is more like a straight seller/buyer business relationship, although there is still a lot of close cooperation in most cases (and not much in others). This is generally nowhere near as effective as distributing through a subsidiary, but the market in, say, Venezuela just isn't big enough to justify setting up a subsidiary. Much better to find a guy who has an already existing import company, hopefully one that has experience with photographic products and is thus already familiar with the photo retail network in Venezuela. Give him the right to distribute Olympus in Venezuela and sell him as much as he's willing to buy. He will cover advertising and marketing costs in his country, and pay for them out of his profit margin. If you get an incompetent or non-aggressive guy, this doesn't work very well (he won't spend money to market, and his sales will be lackluster -- happens all the time).
I'm sure the Olympus Japan corporate web site has details on which of its foreign distributors are wholly-owned subsidiaries and which are not.
So Olympus UK/spain/France would each be a franchisee of Oly Japan
but would operate under the umberella of Oly Europe..
That would mean each country runs it's own operation: they have
total control over what they buy, have total control of how they
handle advertising, servicing and repairs, etc, but they'll always
be connected to the main Olympus empire who will make sure each
territory performs to a decentish standard..
Are they run like that? Just curious.
