LG Electronics - Global Strategy in Emerging Markets

- 1863, John D. Rockefeller founded company to control most of nation’s oil refineries by eliminating competition.

He talks about regular conversations with Kunitake Ando who is the president of Sony. Ando regularly talks about inventing new products even if they only last for a short time. From there the author goes on to talk about inventing new ways to market a product:

“GE traces its beginnings to Thomas A. Edison, who established Edison Electric Light Company in 1878. In 1892, a merger of Edison General Electric Company and Thomson-Huston Electric Company created General

Rockefeller. Rockefeller is known for being the co-founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated all of the oil industry and was labeled as the first great United States business trust. He started by creating an oil refinery and through horizontal integration he bought out his competition. By the 1870’s he started using the vertical integration method and bought the materials used to make the pipes for the use of the oil. The Company grew so much that he set up Headquarters all over the United States to control it. By 1882 a monopoly took over the oil businesses in search of dominance and power over the oil industry. Standard Oil replaced the kerosene distribution with its own vertical system by using tanks cars and wagons; thus improving the quality and availability of the kerosene product and also reducing its price for the public. Standard Oil’s method of beating their competition was by underselling the oil and secret transportation

The Sherman Antitrust Act broke apart Standard oil into several pieces in 1911, and one of these pieces, named Standard Oil Co. of California, would later become Chevron. It was a part of the “Seven Sisters”, which dominated the oil industry on a global level in the early 20th century. Standard oil of California could only use the name when it was in California, and so it adopted the name Chevron. In 1933, Saudi Arabia Granted the company a concession to find oil, which led to the discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia, and the world’s largest oil field.

From 1873-1876, Standard Oil expanded drastically as its role in the oil business increased. This was a cause of Standard Oil entering the pipeline business, as well as acquiring major oil plants in several places including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York.

Due to the increasing demands in oil for all new types of technology, Standard Oil immediately prospered. After much success, Rockefeller started to buy out all of his competitors. Within two years Standard’s controlled the majority of the refineries in the Cleveland area. Standard then used its size and name in the region to make favorable deals with railroads to ship its oil. With all of this success, Rockefeller wanted to make sure that he was making as much money as possible, so he bought almost all the aspects of the business. This would mainly include the transportation used to move around all the oil. Over time Standards footprint got bigger, and started to buy out competitors in other regions with a goal of controlling the whole oil

Founded in 1992 by Lu Quin with a small investment, a ceramics machinery manufacturer. They modeled their business after the European market leaders. By 2002, they got listed on the shanghai Stock Exchange, in 2009 they reported revenues of US$209M almost double the amount of 2006.

The company based its success on 3 pillars of Strategy in the field of Quality, Synergy and Internationalization upon the New Management under the leadership of Lee Kun-Hee. The new management was focused on achieving Quality over Quantity, Low cost Products to Differentiation and Cheap Wages to pioneers in Technology and Branding . The key areas where the company focused were:

Sharing Zhang’s belief that a superior level of category leadership was within reach if the Li Ning brand could somehow acquire elements of brand strength equivalent to those associated with the Nike and Adidas names, vice president of marketing Abel Wu was pursuing a marketing strategy aimed at establishing in people’s minds, just in time for the Olympics, a uniquely differentiated position for the Li Ning brand. Chief among Zhang’s concerns at this point was how to integrate Li Ning’s decision-making to ensure that new opportunities could be seized while making the most of the company’s current competitive advantages.

As we all known, Sony and Matsushita are two of the largest consumer electronic makers in Japan or even in the world. And in this reading, it points out the different strategies Sony and Matsushita use when they were facing the fierce competition in China ----- Matushita was accelerating its pace on stretching the supply chain in China while Sony unexpectedly decided to shift some of its manufacturing business in China back to Japan. In this article, I will discuss the reasons that lead them to make different decision as well as analysize the advantages and the disadvantages of their decision.

Out of the Standard Oil Trust breakup came two companies named Standard Oil of New Jersey and Standard Oil of New York otherwise known as Sonoco. Since they were not allowed to use the Standard name in territories given to the other breakup companies they had to change the name of their brand. They would market their gas under the name Esso and Mobilgas with the Standard label still displayed on their signs. With this increased competition Jersey Standard and Socony were forced to focus on quality and a low cost. To achieve this low cost they purchased interests in overseas oil mostly in the Middle East. Both these companies also were able to compete in overseas markets in Europe and Asia. With the take off of the car, the gasoline industry was booming. Both suffered from fierce competition. However Jersey and Socony had a

Company Background: Samsung is a South Korean multinational company those starting its business as a small trading company and right now becoming world largest corporation. The company deals with its business in several sectors such as advance technology, finance, petrochemical, semiconductors, plant construction, skyscraper, medicine, fashion, hotels, chemical and others. The company was established in 1969 in Suwon, South Korea and known globally for its electronic products (Kelly, 2011). The company is manufacturing several latest technologies, electronic appliances such as mobile phones, tablets, laptops, TVs, refrigerators, air conditioners, washers and other products. The company runs its operations and sales its products in 61 countries with approx 160,000 employees in all over the world (SAMSUNG, 2014). Moreover, the company acquired the position of the world biggest IT maker in 2009 by beating the Hewlett-Packard (HP) previous leader. Its sales revenue in the segment of LCD and LED is the highest in the world. Furthermore, Samsung also becomes world leader in the segment of tablets, mobile phones and gadgets.

In my conclusion, I would like to emphasize that SAMSUNG has a quite distinctive way to carry on its business. From the part of visible aspects, it has a different way to build up its image by emphasizing the blue color, while other competitors such as SONY and APPLE focus on the shape of logos to do the same thing. From another aspect of organizational culture, the invisible aspects, we can find its effort to be adjusting well to a society where the organization affects. It tries to contribute its profit to the society by offering an educational service, a welfare service and even some public performances and so on. Although, it has been obvious that such a large co-operation company like SAMSUNG has a responsibility to contribute its profit to make the society better, SAMSUNG`s profit contribution policy is very well-organized so, it can be a very own aspect that SAMSUNG has. Lastly, its managerial structure has an incredibly unique way to communicate to each other and get a new idea from people. It has a very strict hierarchical structure that is carried out by people in the organization all the time, but

In addition to focusing on SMEs, Li & Fung should focus on acquiring or merging with competing firms. The company should try to get into markets in developing countries such as India. It would also be beneficial for the company to try to break through into new products that are complementary to clothing such as footwear.