About Samsung
Founded by Lee Byung-chul in 1938, Samsung is a multinational company having headquarters in South Korea. The company is very popular for its electronic division.
Samsung boasts a strong portfolio including home appliances, televisions, smartphones, semiconductors, and much more.
Samsung has been a prominent performer in the smartphone market. The Galaxy series of Samsung smartphones achieved worldwide appreciation and popularity for its innovative design and features.
Samsung is also a global manufacturer of semiconductors and consistently supplies components to different industries across the globe. These semiconductors include memory processors and memory chips. Samsung has been heavily investing in research and development since its inception which drives cutting each technology and innovation while pushing all the boundaries of technology upgradation in its products.
Right beyond electronics, Samsung is also instrumental in different sectors like shipbuilding, insurance, etc. that contribute hugely to developing the economy of South Korea while maintaining a significant standard in the worldwide business sector.
Social Media Presence
Samsung uses social media channels to appeal to its potential customers and develop loyalty and also to display product ranges. Its official accounts are well curated and offer product promotions as well along with some exciting videos of behind the scenes and any corporate announcements.
With the help of Facebook, Samsung shares its various content ranges including customer testimonials how-to-use guides, and product launches as well. Facebook helps Samsung customers carry out different activities like customer support, communications with followers regularly, and real-time information.
Instagram is used by the company to post visually appealing content showcasing televisions, other gadgets, and some of the latest smartphones. Its YouTube channel also features tutorials, commercials, and demos that are best for potential and existing customers as well.
On average, Samsung brand’s social media strategy exercises developing community empowering customer relationships, and staying completely relevant in this increasingly digital world. With an active driver presence throughout the platforms, Samsung thrives to resonate and reach its worldwide audience.
Buyer’s Persona
The buyer person of Samsung includes various range of customers as per the broad product portfolio of the company.
Tech-savvy persons
Such individuals value the latest and innovative technology and are quick adapters excitedly anticipating the updated smartphone releases. For them, advanced features, sleek designs, and powerful performance matters a lot. These groups of people engage with social media channels of Samsung and eagerly participate in pre-order events.
Value conscious customers
This significant segment of customers looks for feature-rich and reliable electronic products at economical prices. For this, the buyer’s affordability stands at the top position without compromising on quality. This makes Samsung the best one offering tablets, smartphones, and home appliances in the market. This specific buyer persona likes Samsung products that offer great coordination between long-term use, cost-effectiveness, and performance.
Premium customers
Samsung is not just limited to price-conscious buyers but also attracts premium customers seeking exclusive home entertainment solutions like sound systems home appliances and HD televisions. This segment of buyers looks for smart features, supreme sound, and picture quality along with smooth integration with other devices. Before selecting any product piece research extensively and recommendations as well.
Samsung’s buyer persona includes a wide spectrum of customers right from tech enthusiasts to budget-conscious buyers looking for quality innovation as well as value in their electronic appliances and devices.
SWOT Analysis of Samsung
Strengths of Samsung
Brand reputation
Samsung is one of the most popular brands of smartphones as well as other products. It is among the most trusted brands across the globe as it delivers best-in-class products and services.
The company has a very strong brand image in the market because of its consistent efforts and continuously attractive advertising and marketing campaigns to highlight its products. The brand glory helps the company to maintain and draw a new customer base.
Highly skilled workforce
From the establishment of the company, Samsung has always been recruiting efficient and skilled employees. These workers are truly efficient as well as professional in management as well as quality production.
This proved to be a boon to the company’s expansion and growth worldwide. Samsung has also been successful in attracting top-skilled employees in its business which keeps it on top of the game and maintains its technology and innovative edge.
Diversified portfolio
The Samsung organization is very keen on offering and diversifying its innovative products. The company has a presence in different industries like insurance, display technology, smartphones, semiconductors, finance, construction, as well as, consumer electronics.
This kind of diversification has made the company and has protected against continuous market fluctuations, economic downtime, and recession as well.
Vertically integrated supply chain
Samsung’s vertically integrated supply chain helps the company to control its quality cost and production operations.
Its massive manufacturing of in-house components minimizes its dependency on external suppliers while helping it maintain a very strong control over the product development and manufacturing processes.
Strong distribution network
Samsung has a global distribution network impressing collaborations with different distribution channels retail outlets and its fuse online presence as well.
The extensive distribution network helps the company to target its potential customers in every market segment and allows the company to target a larger audience.
Continuous innovation with research and development
The Samsung group is famous for its high commitment and dedication to research and development. This has helped the company usually in introducing effective technology innovations as well as products.
The company never fails to surprise its customers with its creative products. Samsung consistently emphasizes technology upgradation and innovation that helps it stay abreast of the competitors in the markets of electronics, smartphones, and more.
Weaknesses of Samsung
Intense competition
Being one of the leaders in such an industry where the technology has got some disadvantages like severe market competition. Samsung confronts tough competition due to its diversified income platforms.
This faces intense competition compared to the other brands in various business segments specifically in the consumer electronics and semiconductor industries. The other brands having competition with the Samsung group include Apple, Google, etc.
Reliance on the smartphone sector
This is one of the weaknesses of the Samsung group as it is over-dependent on the smartphone market. The primary reason behind this is Samsung earns a lot of revenue from the smartphone market only.
It makes the company weak to market ups & downs as well as rigid challenges.
Limited presence in the services and software sector
Samsung exceptionally excels in the hardware manufacturing space. However, the company stays behind its competitors in offering innovative services and software. Due to this, the company has not yet developed a detailed ecosystem.
It is affecting the company’s revenue growth as well as customer loyalty which is why Samsung has a few limitations on delivering value-added services to its customers.
QC issues
Long back, Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 had battery problems that caused an explosion. This led the company to recall all the sold phones and even after the appropriate repair and recalls the battery concerns continued.
It canceled the total production of the cells of Galaxy 7. Search incidence spoils the company’s reputation if it occurs frequently. This also destroys the brand’s reputation as well as impacts the sales losing customer loyalty to a greater extent.
Patent breach or legal complexities
Several times Samsung has faced legal complexities with Apple specifically. The legal complexity is mostly related to the patent breach. Such kind of legal issues may damage the company’s reputation and so far.
Usually, such kinds of legal disputes end with financial penalties while reducing the revenue of the company. Not least, but competitors may also make use of the legal disputes of the company to steal their customers.
Limited Software
Samsung is usually dependent on Google’s Android operating system to manufacture its smartphones. This makes it very difficult for the company to differentiate between the competitors and its software brand who leverage the same software platform.
Samsung has a very constrained control over its software experience as well as considerable revenue from software-related services as it is highly dependent on the third party.
Supply chain disruptions
As Samsung is vertically integrated it also offers plenty full of benefits. The supply chain of the company is very complex and extensive which makes it very well able to external factors like global economic downtime, recession, geopolitical tensions, natural disasters, etc.
All these factors contribute to increased production costs, uneven production, and business performance complexities.
Opportunities of Samsung
Acquisitions and unions
Samsung is not recommended to stop acquiring profitable organizations and is advised to spread its footprints and invest more money in collaborating with more companies as well as startups.
The company can also collaborate with startup companies that promise to enhance its brand reputation in the market. The union with creative innovators and taking severe workforce will help Samsung grow consistently with less pressure from competitors.
Expansion and Innovation
Samsung can further diversify in additional market segments. This diversification will assist the company in improving its market share and retaining its top position in the industry segment. Samsung may also enter into the markets like education institutes by only relying on the smartphone industry.
Also, it has more opportunities in other sectors to intensify its growth in the future. With the fact that Samsung offers topmost quality and helps develop higher revenues and acceptance among people.
Establishing unique products
As we all know, Samsung is known for its uniqueness which makes it the leading company in the technological landscape. If the company continues to innovate new products then it will definitely stay on the top of its game.
The smartphone industry is very vibrant in its components and style. The company can leverage the latest technology that will attract new customers and keep them attached to the brand.
As the smartphone industry is very dynamic, trends go out of trend in a very short span of time and this is exactly where Samsung holds the golden opportunity to deliver its customers with aesthetically pleasing styles and design with great features.
This way, the company will grow exponentially if it sets the trends and style at its best.
Leveraging 5G Technology
The technological world is very dynamic and has now moved to 5G Technology. Samsung has the capability to maximize this opportunity at its best and is already implementing with the operators in Europe to supply the necessary equipment for 6g and 5G networks.
Today, the Samsung Group is among the top companies in the United Kingdom’s list of demanding 5G products and services.
Improved HR Management
Another big opportunity for Samsung is to enhance its HR management which will help the company leverage over its competitors. This will also increase the productivity and performance of the employees if it keeps the bar of the company high by hiring resilient, professional, skilled, and qualified employees.
A well-managed HR can increase the company’s brand image to get remarkable results in the long run.
Next-gen smartphone gaming
Samsung has recently launched an innovative processor Exynos 2200. This is integrated with a GPU known as Xcplise GPU. This advanced processor is now at the forefront of innovative technology as it is the next level of mobile processors designed with various CPU cores for engaging gaming performance and graphics in mobile phones.
It is also integrated with the latest version of the neural processing unit featuring ray tracing technology.
Threats to Samsung
Increased competition
Today, companies and startups are arising. This increases the severe competition from consumer electronics computing industries and smartphone products. These organizations strive continuously to outperform to become the best-in-class company in the technology industry.
The competition can be seen as more intense among Samsung, Apple, and Huawei increasing the pressure regarding innovations, new features, pricing as well as market share.
Legal cases
Disturbed leadership can affect the performance of the company. One of the Samsung leaders had caused the tension of the court recently.
One of the legal complications that occurred in South Korea is the consideration of sending one of the Samsung leaders to prison for allegations like audit rule violations and stock price manipulation. This can throw the company into troubling times without any effective leadership.
Fake products
A number of research studies have shown that Samsung is the most counterfeited product when we talk about smartphones. For instance, the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is said to be a counterfeit of all Samsung smartphones in existence. This is one of the major reasons due to which the market share was reduced for the original products.
It is because the income that is generated by the counterfeits goes to the producers of the counterfeits but not the company having the original copy of the product. Another major issue with counter fits is that the quality deteriorates leading to bad customer reviews.
Uncertain economic conditions
Some uncertain incidents like global market fluctuations may lead to a decline in smartphone sales which may prove a major concern to the smartphone industry. The economic recession has led to several financial struggles that have stopped a lot of customers from buying new phones.
Instead of this, they were ready to purchase refurbished smartphones. This sharp fall in sales has negatively impacted the sales growth of Samsung which will continue if the uncertainty persists in the future.
Unsatisfied customers
There has been a rise in the concept that Samsung Galaxy S users are not able to clear their cache memory. One of the users stated that a user of the model of the phone removed all cache but after the user entered his settings the deleted memory could still be found in the phone.
After a lot of experimenting, the user experienced the same incident. After inspection, this showed that the problem was in the phone model and not in the usage of the customer.
These kinds of situations may hinder buyers from purchasing Samsung smartphone models.
Top 5 Competitors of Samsung
- Apple Inc.: Apple is one of the toughest competitors of Samsung in the tablet and smartphone markets. This rivalry between these two companies has been a topic of discussion for a long time.
- Huawei: Huawei competes directly with Samsung in the smartphone space and has been a major player in regions like Asia and Europe. Due to various geopolitical issues, Huawei has witnessed a particular decline in the market.
- Sony: Sony Corporation competes with Samsung in different consumer electronics segments like cameras, audio equipment, televisions, and much more. Both these companies are well known for their innovative and high-quality products and services.
- LG Electronics: This is another South Korean electronic giant company that competes with Samsung throughout different product categories including home appliances, televisions, smartphones, etc. So, Samsung and LG compete with each other in their home market in South Korea.
- Xiaomi: This company is based out of China and offers high-quality smartphones at very affordable prices. This has gained a huge market share across the globe and competes with Samsung in the budget smartphone sector.
Failed Campaigns of Samsung
Do Samsung has been a considerable success in launching its products and marketing them there have also been some incidents where its campaigns confronted a lot of challenges and failed to satisfy customers.
Galaxy Note 7 disaster
In 2016 Galaxy Note 7 brought reports of continuous battery explosions that raised concern about the safety of Samsung smartphones and this called for a massive recall of the products. Irrespective of the company’s efforts to resolve the issue and replace all the faulty devices manufactured the damage to the brand replication was very high resulting in a huge loss of billions of dollars.
Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smartwatch
In 2013 the smartwatch market was very nascent, while Samsung’s early entry in the market failed to develop particular consumer interest. Critics came up with various concerns including poor battery life, limited functionality, and heavy design. This way the marketing campaign of the Galaxy Gear smartwatch failed to communicate effectively with the customers and led to the exile of the Smartwatch to an unknown state.
‘The Next Big Thing’ Campaign
Samsung has faced a lot of criticism for its advertising campaigns like accusations of copying competitors’ strategies. Its ‘The Next Big Thing’ campaign was targeted directly at Apple and its iPhone. This received mixed reactions from industry and consumers across the globe. Though the campaign developed quite good attention but also created debates and got accused of being opportunistic and giving a shortage of originality.
Conclusion
Samsung is one of the greatest companies in the world. The company is also spreading its footprints in other business sectors like security and insurance as well. The company has stopped taking over not just Asian but also Korean markets with its exceptional and cutting-edge technology.
Since its inception, Samsung has been the trendsetter in the technology world causing it to stay at a high position in the intense competitive market. To maintain its strong brand image and growth, Samsung should increase its opportunities and focus more on its strengths while converting its weaknesses into strengths.