Strengths of Samsung as a Brand

Samsung, A South Korean IT brand which has diverse interest in IT solutions, consumer goods, smartphone and devices is one of the largest recognized names all across the globe. The company was pivotal in leading the wave of android software around the world and responsible for creating smartphones for people of all generations.  The company has been doing exceptionally well since its inception, the smartphones of the company are highly innovative, created after extensive study of the market and are made to deliver high performance for its customers. However, in the last few years, the image of the company is going down the hill, primarily because of the failure of Galaxy Note 7. The phone received criticism from all over the world because of a number of fire catching incident, and all this brought the company in the middle of hundreds of lawsuit and an image which needs a serious makeover(Grant, 2016).

The company which has been in the electronics industry for over 70 years is a well-known brand across the globe. It is highly advised that company should focus on leveraging on its strength to keep a competitive edge in the market. Some of these strength which the company should focus as a part of its right away strategy are, the company enjoys widest range of product portfolio including Mobile phones, Laptop, Tablet, Home appliances, camera, Printer, memory cards and many more (Xu, 2015).The brand recognition which the company has gained in the last decade, according to industry estimate the company’s brand recognition increased by 80% over last three years.  Samsung is the Market leader or challenger in most of the product categories, which is a positive sign for the company. Supplier of LED panels to the world’s biggest mobile company Apple, the biggest competitor of Samsung. The company has first mover’s advantage in the Asian market by setting up a manufacturing plant in India to cater the local demands locally. Samsung is a leader in terms of design and technology, the company was the first one to introduce dual screen phone, 65k TFT/LCD color phone AND MANY OTHER INNOVATIONS (Shi, 2016).The company’s policy of rolling out an advanced phone every year gives it a competitive edge. The company creates some of the best marketing campaigns to lure its target audience. Brilliant customer service and support extended by Samsung towards its customers are part of its core strength. Company’s products are not only created for tech-savvy customers, but its products are targeted to people of all ages, good customization makes the phones easier to use.

Opportunities for Samsung to Leverage

Samsung was the flag bearer of bring android software in most of the markets, at the time when Nokia and Blackberry held maximum market share, the company with its highly customizable software and open platform disrupted the mobile phone industry.

Samsung recently decided to launch a new smartphone every year, which leads to cannibalization of its own products. Some of the good functioning phones are replaced with new phones thus not letting the mass penetration of its products (Salah, 2015).Samsung’s high designed and tech savvy laptops are not doing well as expected, the company is incurring huge losses in its laptop division due to stiff competition from other brands. The company found itself in middle of lawsuit with world’s biggest company and the company’s rival, Apple, this has seriously damaged reputation of the company and it has left the company in deep losses due to punitive damages(Hartley, 2017).

A lot of Chinese phones are offering more or less the same features as that of Samsung at relatively low price, diluting the market share of the company. Galaxy note 7 fiasco which tarnished the image of the company severely, the company incurred a loss of $ 3.1 billion with the rollout of the galaxy note 7 and the sales dropped all time low by 16%, the company’s stock also suffered due to the fiasco. Samsung being a hardware leader has a high dependency on its software application.

Opportunities for the companies are external to the organization and the company should take proactive measures to leverage such opportunities. The appetite for smartphone is on a rise globally, the world with a population of 7 Billion is seeing more and more users adapting to the smartphones. The increasing trend of smartphones in the urban and the rural market is a positive sign for smartphones makers(Chiang, 2015). It has been noticed that customers prefer companies which are excellent corporate citizens, and put efforts to do good for the society by virtue of co-creation. Samsung here can leverage this opportunity by doing multiple CSR activity, which will further help the company in reviving its tarnished image, leading to increased buyer patronage. It has also been seen that companies which shows strong commitment to socially responsible behaviour reduces the risk of reputation damaging incident, Samsung here can put this notion to good use by putting a morally high ground in front of its customers. The socially responsible action and sustainable business practices are helpful in reducing the cost and also helps in retaining and attracting better workforce, this is definitely a very big opportunity for Samsung by virtue of its socially responsible behaviour.

Threats to Samsung’s Competitive Advantage

Purchasing power parity of the people across the globe is on rise, which implies that people have more disposable income and thus can easily buy a smartphone. The rise in income is positive news for the mobile makers (Dermawan, 2014).The newly launched Samsung gear has been welcomed by tech enthusiasts and brand loyalists; it has given impetus to the investment in technologies. VR & AR will bring disruption in the market and the technology will find more and more use in different industry, thus Samsung can leverage from it being a first mover in the field of Headgear using the VR technology. Increasing demand of the users for customized product is a welcome sign for the industry leaders and innovators.

Threat of the Chinese phone makers to Samsung, the Chinese companies are rapidly penetrating the global market based on its low pricing and advanced features in the smartphones category (Collins, 2016).Threat from the market leader Apple and its superior IOS platform is a major worry for Samsung; the company is coming up with low priced phones for mass penetration in the Asian market, this has a very serious dampening effect on the company, as the company is losing its competitive edge to the Chinese smartphone makers. Inefficiency in the supply chain of Samsung is a major worry; it gives impetus to more such issues in the near future.A number of retail chains are selling products at a high discount because of increased commission from other smartphone makers, definitely a threat for Samsung (Smith, 2017).Threats from new players entering into the intensive competitive market is another major worry for Samsung, MI, Asus & Zen are rapidly capturing the market sentiments which becomes a source of concern for the company.

Focussing on CSR Activity

 It has been observed that companies which falter at a global scale have to do a make good strategy to attract the attention of its target audience. It is highly expected out of Samsung to focus intensively on its CSR activities to get back the lost customers. Company can focus on the social issues like education and poverty and work towards it. Certain more initiatives like spreading awareness about the internet in the rural market, or increasing digital literacy will benefit the company and the society immensely.

Creating Shared values

Creating shared values is a noble concept which says that companies should focus on the development of the society, community and the country and not just focus on its own business objectives. Samsung has to create a marketing campaign where it has to communicate to the people how Samsung is benefiting the society, the message should be that the company is not focused on increasing the wealth of the shareholders but it is in the market to do good for the society.

Increased social Listening

In the present day scenario, it is most important for the brands to have a good presence on the social media. Social media has to be used not only to increase the brand awareness but to also listen to what people are saying about the brand. The company needs serious improvement in its digital marketing strategy and should focus on building a community on Social media, it has to actively listen to whatever its customers are talking about the product, acknowledge their concerns and address their grievances. It should also ask the customers about what kind of product they would want the company to create, it will increase the engagement and the conversation metrics for Samsung which eventually will help the company to increase its market share.

Efficiency in the Supply chain network

Galaxy note 7 fiasco was an eye opener for Samsung, one of the many suppliers which are the part of supply chain network of Samsung shipped faulty batteries, which ultimately resulted in the phones catching fire. The company has to ensure that it maintain a high quality check process before shipping out any product and at the same time do a ref check on the vendors. The company has to ensure that the vendors empaneled with them have a good experience and not a bad reputation of making faulty products.

Brand Advocacy

In online marketing Brand advocate is a person who talks favourably about the brand or the product. He spread positive word of mouth about the company on his social media, to his peers, colleagues and his family members which help in increasing the brand awareness which results in sales. Thus Samsung as a brand has to focus on creating a community of such brand advocates, nurture them, engage with them on a higher note and use them for organic promotion. These people or the influencers will help the brand to regain the lost market share and also assist in brand building

References

Grant, R. M. (2016). Contemporary strategy analysis: Text and cases edition. John Wiley & Sons.

Shi, Y. (2016). SWOT Analysis of Purchasing Markets in the Region of Asia. Business and Economic Research, 6(1), 403-430.

Hartley, S. (2017). The case of the exploding Samsung phones. Busidate, 25(1), 9.

Chiang, L. C. (2015). A Study on the Application and Niche Market of Laminating Technology in Touch Panel Industry.

Dermawan, A. (2014). A Study On the Entry Strategy of A Multinational Company Into Indonesia: The Case of Samsung Electronics Indonesia.

Collins, B. (2016). Big data and health economics: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Pharmacoeconomics, 34(2), 101-106.

Smith, A. D. (2017). Integrating Intellectual Property and the Smartphone Patent Wars: Case Study of Conflicts of Supplier Partnering.(pp. 33-36).

Xu, Y. (2015, July). Swot Analysis of Domestic Market of Wearable Sports Equipment Based on Internet of Things Technology. In 2015 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Industrial Engineering. Atlantis Press.

Salah, K. (2015, December). A SWOT analysis of TSV: Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In Microelectronics (ICM), 2015 27th International Conference on(pp. 214-217). IE