Samsung: Marketing Strategy

Samsung: Marketing Strategy

Chapter One

Part A

1. Our customers want to own high-quality gadgets/electronics that will serve them for a long time, have innovative features, and are also affordable. Our company is investing a lot of resources towards research and development in order to come up with innovative products for our customers. We are also working towards ensuring we have competitive prices by outsourcing some of our production processes to countries where it is cheaper.
2. Some of our competitors have very innovative products that have captured the imagination of a large share of the market. In addition, some of our competitors also have very cheap products. However, we boast of having a wide variety of products for the customers to choose from. These include television sets, mobile phones, fridges, etc. Hence, customers are likely to buy all our products in case one of them meets his needs and wants. Our competitors do not threaten our competitive advantage since producing a wide variety of products is very expensive. However, we are going to be more innovative and our products will cost less.
3. The company has invested time and money to try to develop products that will capture the imaginations of our customers in the long term and satisfy their wants and needs. This is through producing high-quality innovative products that are cost-effective.
4. Marketing orientation is important to the marketing strategy as it helps narrow down the message that the marketing team needs to communicate with the customers in order to convince them to buy our products. It focuses on the marketing departments’ efforts on selling points that will translate into sales hence increasing the company’s sales and profits.
5. The recent direction that the company has decided to take has eliminated any traces of marketing myopia, as the company does not approach marketing while focusing on its needs. Rather, the company has established a long-term plan that will ensure the customers’ needs and wants are satisfied.

Part B

1. The balance between achieving the company’s long-term goals without putting the short-term goals in jeopardy is struck by carefully understanding what the long-term company objectives are and coming up with a strategic plan that contains short-term objectives. The short-term objectives will act as milestones to show the organization’s progress in achieving its long-term objectives.
2. The marketing function has been integrated throughout the organization. Employees in all the departments are encouraged to market the company through word of mouth and their behavior. They are all expected to reflect the company’s values in their daily lives as part of the company’s overall marketing strategy.
3. Team building activities and exercises are a great way to get the various departments to stop viewing themselves as independent functions within the business and recognize that they are part of a team that consists of all the organization’s departments. Apart from that, the organization could implement policies and procedures that will ensure department corporate to achieve its goals and objectives.

Chapter Two

1. The organization’s value proposition to our employees is the fact that they will work in favorable work environments where they will be treated with respect and dignity. They will also get fair compensation for their labor. To our current customers, they are assured of better quality and innovative products that will last longer and cost less. Our potential new customers, on the other hand, are assured of getting a variety of high quality, long-lasting, and cheap electronic products under one roof.
2. The organization ensures that it delivers exactly what it markets. It does not over-promise yet under-deliver. The marketing strategy seeks to communicate the truth about the products and services the company offers without any exaggerations. This way, customers know what to expect from the organization and are not disappointed when they use the products.
3. The organization should put more effort into word-of-mouth marketing by increasing the incentives for loyal customers who refer others to buy our products. This could be through recognition or discounts.
4. Constant innovation will ensure our products offer our customers the best performance and best customer experience. This will help the organization gain and sustain a competitive advantage in the market over time.
5. The organization emphasizes the importance of building a consistent brand message. The employees understand that a consistent brand message increases the trust levels among the customers towards the brand. It also helps the customers gain an emotional connection with the brand.
6. First, anytime there is an ad campaign running, the employees have to be sold on the idea so that they can work towards fulfilling the customers’ expectations in accordance with the contents of the advertisement. For example, when an ad campaign promises customers excellent customer care services, the employees need to be sold on to the idea that better customer care services will translate to more sales. Second, the organization, during hiring and recruitment should communicate the importance of brand consistency to the recruits for them to act towards achieving it from the beginning.
7. First, the organization should train the employees on how to integrate all their efforts and aim them towards being consistent with the organizational goals. Second, the organization should implement policies and procedures that ensure that the employees’ actions are geared towards achieving brand consistency.

Chapter Three

1. The organization’s mission is to devote its human resources and technology to create superior products and services, thereby contributing to a better global society. The company’s strengths lie with its wide variety of electronic products. However, this may also be viewed as a weakness as they do not specialize in one particular product. The organization’s market objectives are to capture a large enough market share that will enable it to propel to become a market leader.
2. The target customers for the organization are middle-class working citizens as well as college students. Middle-class working citizens are concerned about the price and the quality of the products while college students are more concerned with the features, innovation, and price of their electronics.
3. The company faces competition from organizations from various electronic industries. These include the TV industry, the mobile phone industry, etc. The strengths of most of the competitors are that they specialize in one product hence they can put all their efforts into making very good products. However, this is also a weakness. This is because they do not spread their risk. All these companies have one goal, however. To acquire a great market share and increase their sales.
4. The framework that was chosen is the product life cycle model. The framework explains the different stages that a product undergoes from its inception to its eventual decline. These stages include introduction, growth, maturity, saturation, and decline. In the introduction stage, the product does not have wide recognition hence low sales. In the growth phase, the product rapidly becomes popular hence an increase in sales and profits. In the maturity stage, the product is now well-known and the sales and profits stabilize. In the saturation stage, similar products with slight differences start to spring up in the market hence the sales start to slowly decline as consumers switch to the new products. The decline stage is characterized by a sharp decrease in sales and the popularity of the product. This framework was chosen as it will guide the company on which marketing strategies to use in the various stages of the product’s life in order to increase sales.
5. An important lesson to learn from using this framework is the fact that no matter how innovative a product is if it is not constantly improved and innovated, it will receive competition and eventually decline.
6. This lesson is important as it ensures that the organization is spending more resources on innovation and constantly putting out new and innovative electronics into the market. This will ensure that when one of their products is in the decline stage, there is another in the growth stage or introduction phase hence they will never go out of business.

Chapter Four

1. The company has an opportunity to stop its anti-competitive practices with an emphasis on the bait and switch type of fraud that companies engage in. Here, companies bait customers through advertisements using products that are of low prices. However, the product being advertised is not available and the customers are switched and directed to more expensive products. This type of fraud angers many customers who may stop buying from the company altogether. As such, it must be addressed.
2. The overall strategy is to put an end to bait and switch advertisements and only advertise what the company has in stock and at the right prices.
3. To correct this unethical behavior, the company will list all its products and price them correctly. The unavailable products should be listed as unavailable. The company should then work towards ensuring their products cost less as that is what customers want. The company’s website may not get as much traffic because of its honesty. However, loyal customers will appreciate the company’s honesty and become even more loyal.
4. Taking down the baiting products will be the first step. This will be followed by putting up honest advertisements that do not seek to bait the customers. The long-term plan would be to reduce the organization’s product prices to attract customers without deceiving them.
5. Customer feedback will be crucial in measuring the impact of the strategies. A reduction in customer complaints will be the key measurement strategy. However, the number of website visits that translate into sales will also inform the organization of the effectiveness of the strategies. This is because people who are deceived in this manner do not end up buying anything. As such, when the number of website visits corresponds to the number of sales, it will show that the strategies are working.