Samsungs future in the 4Ps locally and internationally

Samsungs future in the 4Ps locally and internationally

Samsung, as one of the multinational conglomerates based in South Korea, undeniably understands the essence of the 4Ps (product, price, promotion, and place) of marketing in not only creating a competitive advantage, whether by designing top-of-the-line next-generation products, but also how to sustain it. As a highly diversified company that has gained worldwide recognition as a supplier of innovative technologies and electronics, including smartphones, the following are the recommendations for the future of the company in the 4Ps, both locally and internationally:

Product: For the past three decades, Samsung (n.d.) has relied on its research and development to churn out appealing and simple-to-use products to stay ahead of its competitors, like Erickson and Nokia. I believe that the company should continue putting great emphasis on product development by focusing on future trends. Samsung should be thinking of creating easy-to-use 5G network-powered phones because the smartphone world is shifting in this direction. The company should also focus on creating home appliances that are Internet-enabled and capable of using the Internet of Things technology.

Price: This is another critical aspect of the marketing mix that Samsung cannot negate. Price is defined as the amount clients are ready to part with for a service or product. By and large, customers are very price-sensitive and will only purchase items based on their purchasing power as well as the perception of the worth of the product (Hill, 2013). I believe Samsung should price their items based on what its rivals are offering to avoid being priced out by cheaper Chinese products.

Promotion: The term promotion refers to advertising or marketing of products/services to potential buyers (Londhe, 2014). In the future, the company can use targeted marketing by first using research to identify its customer segments, including the media they use to absorb the news. After identifying its target consumers, the company can then design specific ads that focus on these media to maximize customer coverage. For example, the company can target the American population using social media ads because this market is tech-savvy.

Place: this is a vital aspect to consider because it is a point of contact between the product and consumers. I believe Samsung should double the number of its physical outlets in all countries and major cities to increase the interaction of the customers with its products. Besides, Samsung should consider intensively capitalizing on business-to-business platforms, such as Alibaba, eBay, and Amazon, to sell its products.

References

Hill, P. (2013). Pricing for profit: How to develop a powerful pricing strategy for your business. Kogan Page.

Londhe, B. R. (2014). Marketing mix for next-generation marketing. Procedia Economics and Finance, 11, 335-340.

Samsung. (n.d.). About us. Retrieved from https://www.samsung.com/us/business/about-us/

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Global Learning Case: Samsung: Building a Great Brand Ten years ago, Samsung Electronics Company sold a bunch of low-end electronics under various brand names, such as Wiseview, Tantus, and Yepp. The new management decided to ditch these names and brand all of its products, including Samsung. At the same time, it invested heavily in design and product quality and in 10 years, it now makes top-of-the-line cell phones and digital TVs that showcase its technological advancements.

These are products to which consumers form strong bonds because they use them so much. Between 2000 and 2005, Samsung grew its brand equity by 186 percent, the second-biggest gain in value (behind Google), passing Sony, who once had the premier brand reputation in electronics. Good looks, ease of use, useful features—these are the keys to building a great brand reputation. The ultimate driver of brand reputation is a quality product development process.1In 1993, then Samsung Chairman Lee Kun Hee visited the United States and saw for himself that Samsung products were also-rans, lost in the crowd, overshadowed by Sony’s standout design. He correctly concluded that great design and innovation were the ways to build Samsung into a great global brand. Did he hire hundreds more great marketers to build a great brand? No. He hired hundreds more young hip designers, many of whom had been trained in premier U.S. higher-education schools of design (the number of designers employed by Samsung increased from about 100 to more than 450 in the next decade, with an average age of 33). Designers were sent all over the world to great museums, art galleries, ancient ruins, and illustrious modern architecture. They now also spend sabbaticals with design consultancies, fashion houses, furniture designers, and other centers of design excellence abroad. Samsung designers come back with their minds loaded with great design ideas; they lead the product development, not marketers. It is hard to argue with this process of inspiring great design innovation: hire creative, well-trained young designers who are willing to take risks and light up their minds. But the Samsung product development process also involves a very grounded “usability laboratory” in downtown Seoul to study how consumers get products out of boxes, read or do not read instruction guides, and follow icons and instructions on cell-phone screens. Understanding the user interface is key to Samsung and has been key to its success. However, Samsung also has design centers in San Francisco, London, Tokyo, and Shanghai. To support great design, there is a research and development center just outside Seoul, South Korea. Here, the top-gun engineers and designers hunker down and solve the toughest product specification and design problems, working 24/7 in a five-story building equipped with sleeping dormitories, a sauna, a gym, billiards, and ping-pong tables. No layers of bureaucracy trying to justify their not-very-productive existence; no endless committees; no staged review gauntlets, stop-go-dawdle reviews, or somewhat fawning ritual presentations to distracted senior executives: “Everybody knows that bureaucracy means death to new ideas, yet most companies still insist on forcing innovative products and ventures through a gauntlet of presentations and reviews and refinements.”2 No nay-saying lawyers. No delaying actions by feuding factions or senior executives pulling rank and exercising political brinkmanship at this R & D center. No, “that is not the way we do things here.” The 24/7 approach to problem-solving is pretty intense but compelling in its logic. Other companies such as Steelcase, the Mayo Clinic, P&G, and Motorola are developing and using similar innovation labs. It involves concurrent engineering and fast prototyping and deviates quite considerably from yesterday’s best-practice process of product development presented in Module 6. For Samsung, 80 percent of quality, cost, and delivery time is determined in the initial stages of product development and Samsung is obsessed 1 The history of Samsung’s development of its innovative design processes is drawn from: Cliff Edwards, Moon Ihlwan, and Pete Engardio, “The Samsung Way,” BusinessWeek, June 16, 2003, pp. 56–64; David Rocks and Moon Ihlwan, “Samsung Design,” BusinessWeek, Dec. 6, 2004, pp. 88–96; “Brand new,” The Economist, Jan. 13, 2005, pp. 10–11; Peter Lewis, “The Perpetual Crisis Machine,” Fortune, Sept. 19, 2005, pp. 59–76; Moon Ihlwan, “Camp Samsung,” BusinessWeek, July 3, 2006, pp. 46–48. 2 Steve Hamm, “Speed Demons,” BusinessWeek, March 27, 2006, pp. 67–76.