Advanced Business Communication: Samsung Note 7 Case Study Report

This report provides an in-depth analysis of Samsung's communication strategies during the Note 7 crisis. It examines the company's approach to communicating with stakeholders, including customers, the media, and the public. The report identifies the channels of communication used, such as public relations and media coverage, and analyzes their effectiveness. It also delves into the reasons for communication failures, highlighting issues such as the lack of a designated spokesperson, negative media coverage, and cultural barriers. The report concludes with recommendations for improving Samsung's communication, such as designating the CEO as the primary spokesperson and utilizing push messages to directly communicate with users during crisis situations. The assignment is based on a case study from a Business Communication course and aims to evaluate the effectiveness of communication strategies in a real-world business context.

Running head: COMMUNICATION IN SAMSUNG 7 CASE
COMMUNICATION IN SAMSUNG 7 CASE
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Executive Summary
The aim of this report is to discuss the importance of proper communication
system in the companies with a highly engaged stakeholder group. This report has
discussed strategies applied by Samsung to communicate with its stakeholders pointing
out the receivers of that communication. There are various reasons of communication
failure due to effective choice of channels of communication and barriers of
communication. The company had faced this communication issues as it did not select
perfect communication channel especially the spokesperson who will be conveying the
message to the stakeholders and help the company to cope up with the crisis. This
report concludes with recommendation where the company needs to mandate the
designation of CEO to be the spoke person in any cases like Note 7 issues. Moreover,
the report also recommended the company could use push messages to communicate
directly to the users as they send system upgrade message.
Background on the Company
Samsung is a mobile phone company based in South Korea and doing business
in all over the world. All of the products of this particular company have gained good
reviews by the users hence it has a huge customer base globally. It had launched its
two flagship phones in 2016 in the UK namely Galaxy S7 and Note 7. However, despite
the immense success of Galaxy S7, the issues regarding Note 7 had marred total
initiative by the company. The company therefore, canceled and recalled the production
of Note 7 and tried to develop strategies to cope up with this crisis of defamation.
Analysis and Reasons for Failure
Strategies to communicate with stakeholders
Samsung aimed to compare the campaign results of their rival companies
working in the UK market. This is the reason why it has used public relations and
earned media software so that Samsung gets empowered to identify influencers and
craft as well as distribute meaningful stories. It used the competitor data regarding
comparable product launches to highlight the potential of the campaigns. Proper data
has been collected about the target audience especially the millennials so that the

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success of the campaigns of Samsung could be measured like those of Apple’s. The
company centered round the survey of UKPulse that reveal the list of publications used
by the targeted segment of the company. The company communicated about its product
through these publications as this ensured highest reach of the target audience. To
communicate the problems the company took help from these publications so that it can
reach the chief customer base.
In addition to this, the company aimed to enhance the organic coverage of its
campaign so that it could discuss the product’s Lifecyle following their initial launch. In
this regard the company used the similar method previously used by Apple and
successfully analyzed the competitor. The company has also used the open-ended
tracking for identifying reputational issues in the company and its PR agencies to
mitigate the negative coverage of the Note 7. In the whole process of surveying and
conveying important messages, Samsung avoided using automation but used the
human analysts. After the problem raised, the company continued to track media
sentiment so that the actions of the company to mitigate the Note 7 problem could be
reported.
Receivers in the communication:
The receivers of this communication were the customers who bought the Note 7
from Samsung and reported the issues of overheating of the phone and exploding. In
addition to this, the company communicated its message to the millennials as they were
the important demographic for this company. They contain the chief customer base of
the company. This particular communication has been aimed to reach the media
channels both online and offline who had taken initiative to report the issues regarding
Note 7 to the world and target markets of the company.
Appropriate channels of communication:
In order to communicate these issues and the initiates taken by the company, it used
appropriate channels to communicate. It used the media coverage such as BBC online
and The Guardian to communicate their message effectively. In addition to this
company used various famous faces around the world to communicate to the

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stakeholders. These celebrities include, Magician Dynamo, numerous famous athletes
and comedian Jack Whitehall in the company’ s Olympics campaign. This was
important this these communication channel will be able to reach the target audience
more effectively (Poldma 2016).
Barriers to communication
In communication the message of the company successfully, Samsung faced
several issues or barriers to communication. These include the incapability of
Spokesperson to convey message of the company to the stakeholders, negative media
coverage, critical audience especially the millennials and cross-cultural organizational
behaviors. As there was no appropriate spokesperson in the company who would issue
an official statement to minimize the pubic grudge, the company suffered more. The
heads of the company located in the head quarter South Korea, was reluctant to make
public comments on the crisis of Note 7 due to cultural reasons. However, ongoing
product defaults of Note 7 continued to produce more coverage and the perceived lack
of ownership led to the tone becoming strongly unfavorable (Pang et al. 2018). Hence it
suffered more and faced immense ill reputation for more than nine months.
Conclusions & Recommendations
Therefore, it can be concluded that Samsung had suffered from communication
issues where the failure of Note 7 ultimately led to defamation of the company globally.
In order to manage this issue, the company needs to include the duty of CEO of
Samsung to communicate important messages on behalf of the company every time.
This will mitigate any crisis situation and help the company to recover soon. In addition
to this, the company can use push messages directly to the phones of the users as they
get system upgrade messages regularly. These methods will mitigate the issues of
crisis regarding any of the products or services of the company in one hand and
maintain good relationship among the stakeholders and the company based on loyalty
and trust on the other.

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References:
Pang, A., Shin, W., Lew, Z. and Walther, J.B., 2018. Building relationships through
dialogic communication: organizations, stakeholders, and computer-mediated
communication. Journal of Marketing Communications, 24(1), pp.68-82.
Poldma, T., 2016. Communication and stakeholders. In Retail Design (pp. 161-181).
Routledge.