Samsung Electronics : Global Strategies

During its product life cycle Samsungs market strategy was developed by aggressive research and development investment .Its first strategy came by producing spare parts for electronic item for Japanese manufacturers. Then they move to white and black and white television and soon to other electronic appliances.

Samsung Electronics is a South Korean multinational electronic company with headquarter located in Suwon, South Korea. According to Forbes (2016), Samsung is the world’s second largest information technology company with $177 billion in revenue. Samsung is a major manufacturer of electronic components such as lithium-ion batteries, semiconductors, chips, flash memory, and hard drive devices for clients such as Apple, Sony, Nokia, and HTC (About Samsung, n.d.). Samsung has been the world’s largest television manufacturer since 2016 and the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile phones and smartphones since 2011 through its Samsung Galaxy line of devices (Garside, 2013). However, the primary focus for this discussion will be the distribution strategies for its Galaxy S series smartphones.

Samsung products range from mobile devices, TV, audio and video, home appliances, cameras, PC and peripherals and print solutions (Samsung 2014). This essay will predominantly look closely at Samsung’s mobile phones market.

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:

Today Samsung has evolved into a group of companies unmatched by others in its range of industries and performance. It is now globally focused and responsive to the needs of each market, and more committed than ever to true innovation. The group’s three core business sectors are electronics, finance and trade and services.

In the year of 1990s Samsung has expanding and globalizing their business especially in electronic, particularly mobile phones and semiconductors, have become its most important source of income. Samsung have been operating over 50

Before the 1990s, the South Korean company Samsung enjoyed a distinct advantage. Cheap labor costs in South Korea allowed Samsung to produce inexpensive "low-end" products and avoid direct competition from more expensive

The features that drive demand when it comes to Samsung products are the innovations. This is why Samsung in some cases dominates the market. Samsung is able to produce high technological products and offer it to consumers. The greatest example of this is smartphone called Galaxy S III. When Samsung started manufacturing Galaxy S III they were one of the top sellers of the smartphones all over the world. They almost beat the Apple, but after iPhone 5 came out the significant changes occurred in the market.

Strategic management plays a vital role in most organisations as it consists of formulating and implementing the company’s goals; this is done by taking into account the available resources and doing an analysis of the internal and external environment (Takalkar, 2014). The author of this essay will be identifying and analysing a significant strategic challenge that was faced by a local and global entity from two different industries, furthermore an external and internal analysis will be given. Lastly the author will address how the two organisations were able to overcome the strategic challenge in order to strengthen the strategic positions of the organisations. The local entity that was chosen is Eskom which falls part of the energy industry and for the global entity Samsung was chosen as it falls part of the technology industry. The differences found between Samsung and Eskom are that Samsung provides products that can be seen as a want for its consumers whereas Eskom provides a service which is a need for the general public. A similarity that can be found between the two entities is that both these companies are leading players within the industry they belong to. The reason these two organisations

Established in 1938, Samsung is one of the business pioneers in a huge number of ventures from power generation through to advanced mobile phones (Kovach, 2013). Each of their specialty units hold fast to a similar vision of turning into the favored provider of items or potentially administrations to their customers, yet the strategies used to accomplish this vision are custom-made to suit the particular market concentrate, in this way showing the flexibility of the organization.

Samsung portrayed a very interesting and impressive success story in every aspect of development. Although they were hit hard by financial crisis in 2009, Samsung survived the ordeal with their impressive financial performance. The astonishing part of their achievement is mostly guided by internal management capability, positive aligned culture and belief system that empowering human capital is the foundation in building and

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 the midst of the global financial crisis, the Korean currency’s value, won, had fallen tremendously. Samsung’s management team saw this as an opportunity to start outsourcing from China, where they manufactured LCDs and Mobiles for a fraction of the price. By 2011, Samsung had the largest Mobile share in China. They decided that by moving out they would understand the surrounding markets (Zahou, 2015). Chairman Lee commissioned a task force team to make in-depth market research to find out the needs of the market and to study the foreign trends. Feeling limited with the trends of the Asian

As a born manufacturer, the pressure for global integration has been an important component for Samsung as well as the need of efficient operations in order to achieve the economy of scale with their products. When we analyse Samsung through Bartlett and Ghoshal dimensions, such as pressure for global integration and pressure for local responsiveness, it is clear, due to the nature of the business that high need for global integration positions the company in the category of Global strategy. This strategy is effective due to the fact that customers’ needs are universal, allowing cost reduction in manufacturing and technologies development centralised in specific global locations. Samsung geographical location, allowed the firm to access cheaper raw material and embrace manufacturing costs, which allowed them to be competitive in the electronics

Samsung is one of the world’s premium electronics manufactures. The estimated value of Samsung brand had risen from US$6.37 billion in 2001 to US$10.85 billion in 2003. A major factor behind this impressive growth had been Samsung’s effort to redefine itself as a vendor of cutting-edge, “gee-whiz” consumer technology. Samsung believed that repositioning the brand is a vital to the company’s future success.