Samsung Marketing Strategy Analysis

This assignment requires a detailed analysis of Samsung's marketing strategy. Students are tasked with examining Samsung's target audience, brand positioning, and utilization of digital media platforms. The analysis should focus specifically on the Galaxy S series as a case study, providing insights into Samsung's successful marketing tactics within this product line.

Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Plan
Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Plan for Samsung
Electronics Ltd
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Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Plan
Contents
1. Company Background – Samsung Electronics Ltd........................................................................3
2. Target Audience Segment Analysis...............................................................................................4
3. Communication (advertising) Objectives......................................................................................4
4. Creative advertising strategy and justification for advertising objectives......................................6
5. Media Plan.....................................................................................................................................7
6. Evaluation Strategy to measure effectiveness of IMC plan............................................................8
7. References.....................................................................................................................................9
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Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Plan
1. Company Background – Samsung Electronics Ltd
Samsung Electronics Ltd is one of the leading Korean – based company which is
primarily involved in manufacturing and distribution of wide range of electronic products.
Samsung Electronics Ltd was established in the year 1969 (Lee and Lee, n.d.). Samsung
Electronics Company manages and operates its widespread global business through three
different verticals. The primary segment is the Consumer Electronics (CE) Segment that is
mainly involved in the manufacturing of high – end technological devices such as printers,
monitors, colour televisions (LCD and LEDs), refrigerators, washing machines, and air
conditioners etc. The second most important segment is named as IM (Information
Technology and Mobile Communications), which is mainly responsible for manufacturing of
network systems, computers, digital cameras and handhold phones (HHPs) etc. Lastly, the
third segment of operation is (DS) Device Solutions segment and is into the manufacturing of
various display and semiconductor parts such as, flashes, DRAMs (Dynamic Random Access
Memory), and TFT – LCDs etc. Samsung Electronics Limited has its business presence
active in domestic as well as in overseas markets (Reuters, 2017).
With more than 70 years of active global business, Samsung Electronics Ltd
expanded its business verticals to petrochemicals, plant construction, hotels, medicine, and
finance etc (Samsung, 2017).
Marketing Objectives
Just like the innovation in their products, Samsung Electronics Ltd has been using
innovative marketing strategies in diverse types of promotion. In order to attract potential
customers, Samsung Electronics is using advertising as the major promotional strategy. Apart
from advertising, Samsung Electronics makes use of other approaches as their promotional
strategies and makes customers to buy their products. These promotional tactics include
sponsoring events, discounts on product range, public relations, personal selling, direct
marketing and engaging in national and global festivals etc (White, 2015). Considering a
survey conducted in the year 2013, it can be seen in Figure - 1 that Samsung Electronics Ltd
is the leading company to invest highest budget for marketing activities in comparison with
competitors. Also, Samsung makes use of push marketing strategy using spot placements and
celebrity endorsements on important events such as entertainment shows and sports (Yeung,
2016).
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Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Plan
Figure – 1 Marketing budget of Samsung versus its competitors in 2013
2. Target Audience Segment Analysis
As a part of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Plan, target audience
segment analysis is carried out to understand the potential customers to buy Samsung
products in large scale. Demographic segmentation analysis is one of the effective and most
efficient ways to target audience. Considering the previous customers and sales of Samsung
Electronics Ltd, it is quite clear that the users’ of Samsung Electronics products are mostly
from urban localities and are in age group of 20 to 50 years. Smart phones and televisions
(LEDs) are among the highest selling Samsung products around the globe (Teresita and
Ramos, 2017).
Target audience or customers are both males and females and are from middle – class
and higher – class category. Considering the occupation of target audience, they come in
category of school / college students, working professionals etc. Another segment analysis to
identify target audience is the buying frequency of customers. Customers in age group of 25
to 35 often change their electronic products and buy the latest ones. Marketing strategy of
Samsung Electronics Ltd must focus on this segment of customers to attract them to buy
products (Smallbusiness.chron.com, 2017).
3. Communication (advertising) Objectives
As an IMC Manager for Samsung Electronics Ltd, it is very important to develop
effective communication (advertising) objectives as a part of IMC Plan. In this section, three
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Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Plan
most important communication objectives have been developed and presented for Samsung
Electronics Ltd.
1. Developing brand awareness – Though Samsung Electronics Ltd has good social
media presence in various sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram etc, the
strategy to develop brand awareness is by creating online forums in the social
media sites and asking users’ about their favourite Samsung products and related
questionnaire. It is very important to ensure that the online forums/ survey /
questionnaire are engaging and entertaining for customers. Users’ providing the
best answers or feedback in these forums can be provided with discount vouchers
on their next purchase in Samsung Electronics. This strategy works the best as
customers are more attracted to such discounts and sale offers
(Smallbusiness.chron.com, 2017). Not only modern tools, Samsung must also use
the traditional communication tool to create brand awareness. Samsung
Electronics Ltd must choose newspapers as their medium to develop brand
awareness by printing attractive and eye catchy ads in them. Samsung Electronics
must ensure to display their premium products in all stores, malls, and also
participate in events and sponsor them (Romaniuk et al., 2004).
2. Developing product image – Developing product image in market and among the
existing and potential customers’ is one of the challenging tasks in marketing
communication as there is tough competition in market and competitor products
can easily takeover the sales of company. To develop effective product image
among target audience, it is important to understand the product positioning in
market. having researched on the mindset of customers (existing and potential), it
has been noticed that customers tend to develop their opinions towards products
they come across in day to day life (MaRS, 2013). Thus, Samsung Electronics Ltd
must ensure bridge the gap between positioning and communication by taking
effective steps in developing product image. This bridge gap can be reduced or
eliminated by explaining the customers few key points about the product, the
benefits from product, the effect of product and the motivation towards the
product. Apart from these factors, Samsung Electronics will also focus to explain
the product packaging, product contents and features, pricing of the product,
media recommendations, references and product performance etc. These factors
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Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Plan
will definitely help the company to develop an effective brand image (MaRS,
2013).
3. Influencing the purchase intentions – There is no doubt that Social media plays an
important role in increasing company’s purchases by influencing the customers’
purchase decisions and intentions in an effective manner. Samsung Electronics
must take advantage of the social media extensively to influence the purchase
intentions of their customers. Customers already using the products must be
allowed to post and share their experience of using Samsung product in online
forums and social media sites (Lim et al., 2016). This generates a great value for
Samsung as well as for the potential customers. Also, it has been found that
customers are more encouraged by companies to rate and review their product
range online. This type of word of mouth generated via social media, help
customers to make purchase decisions and influence them to buy the products (C
S, 2015). Thus, customer reviews must be provided utmost priority in online
forums, social media sites and e – commerce sites as well as in Company’s
official website.
4. Creative advertising strategy and justification for advertising objectives
Developing creative advertising is one of the most difficult tasks in marketing and
advertising domain. Product quality and performance, brand image and overall brand reviews
etc are some of the factors that affect the overall effectiveness of the advertising process. As
already mentioned in the previous section of report that online product reviews posted by
customers, and social media presence of company etc are a major part of advertising and
promotional activities. Thus, considering these elements of advertising for Samsung
Electronics, the strategy is to show the presence of Samsung Company and its high – end
products in one of the online media channel.
Web series are in big trend now and many online sites such as YouTube, Amazon
Prime and Netflix etc broadcast web series. The creative advertising strategy is to use
Samsung’s electronic products in these web series such as smart phones, televisions, and
other appliances. Viewers will have a huge impact of the Samsung products as the unique
features of the products will be presented in web series in the form of humour or any social
message. Also, Samsung Electronics Ltd can sponsor the web series which will also be highly
effective for the company’s creative advertising strategy.
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Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Plan
Having formulated the creative advertising strategy, it is equally important to consider
the advertising objectives and understand if there are any ethical issues arising as a part of the
Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Plan. The first advertising objective is brand
awareness, and through creative advertising strategy, Samsung will promote and advertise
their products in web series and do not intend to focus or hurt sentiments of any tribe or
group. The creative advertising will mostly cover humour and great social message and thus,
there will not be any ethical issue in this regard. Similarly, the creative advertising strategy
aims to develop good product image in each of their web series episode and do not intend to
use the opportunity for negative publicity. Purchase intentions among customers will be
influenced through the creative advertising and thus, considering both the advertising
objectives and creative advertising strategy, it will be ensured that there are no ethical issues
arising from the advertising plan.
5. Media Plan
Considering the previous parts of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Plan
developed for Samsung Electronics Ltd, it is quite clear that digital media or internet has been
given utmost priority in addition to the traditional forms of advertising. The media plan under
IMC will make use of most effective and recently trending media vehicles to ensure high –
level of advertising for the existing and potential customers for Samsung Electronics Ltd. The
media vehicles that will be used in media plan are as follows:
1. New Media: In the recent times, technological advances are also seen in new media
and have increased significantly which are available for various advertisers to
effectively communicate with their respective customers as well as prospects. The
IMC Plan for Samsung Electronics Ltd considers new media as a form of higher level
of interactions between the customer and advertiser. The new media for Samsung’s
IMC Media Plan will include SMS and internet (Drypen, 2008). The main purpose for
choosing new media for Samsung Electronics Ltd is because the advertisers can easily
target the tightly clustered potential customers or audiences with well – defined and
structured messages. Also, blogs, Twitter and online news channels will be used
under new media for media plan development (Sudhakar, 2011).
2. Internet Advertising: Internet advertising will be carried out in forms of ads in web
series, sponsoring web series, displaying ads in online blogs, social media sites such
as Facebook, Twitter etc. Advertising the web series in creative manner to attract
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Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Plan
audiences to the web series and connect them to the Samsung products (Drypen,
2008). Also, online forums will be developed and customers will be encouraged to
participate in the forums and share their experience and reviews of Samsung products
that they use in day to day life.
6. Evaluation Strategy to measure effectiveness of IMC plan
Evaluating internet – based Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Plan can be
a difficult task. The strategy here is to develop pilot projects as a part of IMC and Media Plan
for Samsung Electronics Ltd and implement these advertising and media projects for a
smaller group of people or audiences. Evaluating the effectiveness of these pilot projects
becomes very easy and thus, considering the response, the IMC plan can be implemented for
a larger audience group. Also, as the media presence of Samsung Electronics Ltd will be
showcased in various media vehicles, a third – party company will be hired to evaluate the
effectiveness of each of the media vehicles and understand audience involvement, their
preferences and perspective towards the creative advertising strategy developed by Samsung
Electronics (E. Belch and A. Belch, n.d.).
Also, in addition to these methods, an online survey or questionnaire can be
developed to understand audience perspectives and reviews on the advertising strategy of
Samsung Electronics Ltd and the conversations can be easily tracked (such as website traffic,
twitter comments and followers etc) and also certain effective actionable metrics can be
collected such as email subscribers, event registrations, and email engagement rate etc
(McPhillips, 2014).
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Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Plan
7. References
C S, H. (2015). Influence of social media ads on consumer’s purchase intention. International
Journal of Current Engineering and Scientific Research (IJCESR), 2(10), p.110.
Drypen (2008). Media Vehicles and Their Types. [online] drypen.in. Available at:
http://www.drypen.in/media-resource/media-vehicles-and-their-types.html [Accessed 24
Aug. 2017].
E. Belch, G. and A. Belch, M. (n.d.). Evaluating The Effectiveness of Elements of Integrated
Marketing Communications: A Review of Research. San Diego: San Diego State
University.
Lee, B. and Lee, S. (n.d.). Case Study of Samsung’s Mobile Phone Business. KDI School of
Public Policy and Management.
Lim, Y., Osman, A., Salahuddin, S., Romle, A. and Abdullah, S. (2016). Factors Influencing
Online Shopping Behavior: The Mediating Role of Purchase Intention. Procedia
Economics and Finance, 35, pp.401-410.
MaRS. (2013). Positioning to create an image of your product for your target customer |
Entrepreneur’s Toolkit. [online] Available at:
https://www.marsdd.com/mars-library/positioning-creating-an-image-of-your-product-
in-your-target-customers-mind/ [Accessed 23 Aug. 2017].
McPhillips, C. (2014). A Simple Plan for Measuring the Marketing Effectiveness of Content.
[Blog] Content Marketing Institute. Available at:
http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2014/07/simple-plan-measuring-marketing-
effectiveness-of-content/ [Accessed 24 Aug. 2017].
Reuters. (2017). Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. [online] Available at:
https://in.reuters.com/finance/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=005930.KS [Accessed 23
Aug. 2017].
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Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Plan
Romaniuk, J., Sharp, B., Paech, S. and Driesener, C. (2004). Brand and Advertising
Awareness: A Replication and Extension of a Known Empirical Generalisation.
Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ), 12(3), pp.70-80.
Samsung. (2017). SAMSUNG. [online] Available at:
http://www.samsung.com/us/aboutsamsung/ [Accessed 23 Aug. 2017].
Smallbusiness.chron.com. (2017). How to Increase Brand Awareness for a Product. [online]
Available at: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/increase-brand-awareness-product-
41158.html [Accessed 23 Aug. 2017].
Smallbusiness.chron.com. (2017). Target Customer Segmentation Analysis. [online]
Available at: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/target-customer-segmentation-analysis-
77625.html [Accessed 23 Aug. 2017].
Sudhakar, G. (2011). Digital media vehicles. [online] Slideshare.net. Available at:
https://www.slideshare.net/gpsudhakaar/digital-media-vehicles [Accessed 24 Aug.
2017].
Teresita M. Ramos, B. (2017). Audience Analysis Audience Segmentation. [ebook] Available
at: http://www2.wpro.who.int/internet/files/eha/dir/Risk%20Communication
%20Presentations/Module%202%20Audience%20Analysis.pdf [Accessed 23 Aug.
2017].
White, W. (2015). Samsung Marketing Strategy: The Master Brand · Inevitable Steps.
[online] Inevitable Steps. Available at: http://inevitablesteps.com/marketing/samsung-
marketing-strategy/ [Accessed 23 Aug. 2017].
Yeung, N. (2016). The marketing strategy for Samsung Galaxy. [online] Version Daily.
Available at: http://www.versiondaily.com/marketing-strategy-samsung-galaxy/
[Accessed 23 Aug. 2017].
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