Marketing Audit For Samsung: Situational Analysis, Internal Strengths And Weaknesses, STP Analysis Essay.

For an organisation of your choice (a product or service provider is equally acceptable) conduct a marketing audit on the organisation.

Your audit should contain the following:

1. A situational analysis including organisational goals, context and competitor activity.

2. A review of the internal strengths and weaknesses of the organisation.

3. The establishment of marketing objectives that support the organisational goals set out in section 1.

4.The development of outline marketing activities (4Ps or 7Ps) including a planning timetable to support the objectives set in section3.

5. A conclusion outlining the benefits to the organisation that will result from the implementation of the marketing activity contained in the audit.Understand the concepts of segmentation, targeting and positioning.

• Describe how the marketing environment affects a firm's strategy.
• Describe the role of marketing within service firms.
• Analyse the marketing mix.

The marketing audit is one of the most success-critical factors for every business. It is significant for companies of every size to think of undertaking a marketing audit with the purpose of recognizing and reviewing the present position of brand marketing related activities and assist in reducing future expenditure. In the opinion of Baker (2014), it can be stated that predominantly for the SMEs (small to medium enterprises) businesses, which are preferring to find out the marketing related activities those are working and the kind of activities that are not working as well and determine this next to expenditure. The present study aims to conduct a marketing audit on Samsung, US. It would focus on the aspects like situational analysis of the company on the chosen market. Moreover, the internal strength and the weakness of Samsung, US would be determined. In addition, the researcher would attempt to evaluate the established goals and marketing objectives of the firm in the light of management orientation. The current situation of the chosen firm in terms of product and offering subsequently would be analyzed with the support of Segmentation Targeting and Positioning (STP) framework. Also, the marketing services of the firms would be evaluated with 4P’s (i.e. Product, Price, Promotion and Place) framework. Finally, the researcher will wrap up the discussion by way of concluding note.

It has been identified that Samsung believes in having a simple philosophy. The brand believes in the goals of devoting its talent technology and talent of establishing the superior products and service lines that contribute to better the global society (Samsung Electronics America., 2018). To attain the organizational goals, Samsung has managed to set a high value on both its resources and technologies.  In addition to the latter statement, it has been assessed that Samsung is more committed to complying with the local regulations as well as applying the strict international code of conduct to every resource (Samsung Electronics America., 2018). Furthermore, it can be stated the brand aims to stand by the ethical abidance of the company. Samsung takes effective initiatives to train its employees and operate the monitoring system while performing fair and loyal corporate practices. With the support of its human resource and advanced technologies, the management of the brand has been able to make an extension of its HRM development and technical superiority with suitable management objectives.

In the US market, Samsung faces primary competition from Apple Inc. As per the data of Verto Watch, from the year January 2018, in the Smartphone segment, Apple has managed to capture 45% of market share, whereas, Samsung has performed below part by attaining 33% of the share of the market (Hwong, 2018). On the other hand, LG had been the third-placed contender in the same market, which has managed to capture only 10% of the market share and the other combined brands have accounted for just 12% of the US market in the device section (Hwong, 2018). The US market is specifically led by Apple Inc. However, Samsung is still struggling on the race of ranking first in the market.

STP Analysis

                                                                            (Source: Hwong, 2018)

The figure above shows that the firm has managed to gain a substantial market share as far as other brands, except Apple is concerned. However, the firm needs to maintain the same with the quality offering and customer satisfaction throughout as the market is highly competitive.

Samsung's demographic segmentation approach emphasizes on both males and females targeting the users aged between 13 to 60 years. The product lines of the brand are offered with indifferent features to different customers depending on their levels of incomes. In the consideration of Al Fahad et al. (2015), it can be stated that the brand has also segmented its customers as per their occupations, for instance, students, business or daily employees. As per the Psychographic segmentation aspect, the organization has distinguished its customers on the basis of their personalities and lifestyles, such as ambitious, electronic-savvy or sports lover (Camilleri, 2018).

According to McDonald and Wilson (2016), the brand has not been able to surpass the quality assurance offered by Apple. Therefore, it usually targets the customers who usually seek to purchase Apple's product lines but find the range to high. Samsung usually adds or try to imitate the similar specifications of Apple and release its new flagship in the market at the much lower range.  Moreover, Palmatier et al. (2016) asserted that Samsung also targets the customers that prefer style over quality. The brand focuses more on the styles and designs of its devices. This is where it is trying to surpass the range of Apple, As Apple's devices are simply looking but offer high-quality assurance. On the other hand, Samsung tends to focus more on outlook and design.

In the recent time, Samsung is embodied with innovative technologies, combines with style, edged designs and imposing new premium touch to its new Galaxy flagship. As per the statement of Bentley-Goode et al. (2017), Samsung usually differentiates its brand from its former cost leadership structure, in which it has been able to restructure its pricing strategy and offer products with much-advanced technology at an affordable rate. Samsung is still making efforts to position its product lines in the category of best innovation, the value of money, healthy living, an integral part of the family, energy efficient and cost saving.  

The strong research and development team of the brand has been its major strength. The team has been efficient enough in conducting suitable research, which is resulting in the strongest patent portfolios in the sector. The brand is also viewed as the most innovative company and capable of producing trendy design and eco-friendly products. As per Holyash and Halushka (2017), the brand is trying its best to stand by the ethical rules and practices its internal performances or functions accordingly. The employees are given required attention and appreciations in terms of rewards, benefits and not financial considerations (Wensley, 2016). Therefore, the majority of Samsung’s employees are satisfied with the company and workplace environment. This has been another internal strength of Samsung.

Internal Strengths and Weaknesses

It has been identified that Samsung usually embraces indifferent business cultures. The culture definitely offers greater product varieties, but it fails to impose the same impact over it resources base (Shaughnessy, 2018). In order to survive the market position and threats, the management of the brand is constantly changing its business models and interoperation process. The constant experimentation approach is somewhat exploiting the resources to work on one particular project several times. Hence, the resources are getting fatigued and exhausted with this internal approach of the brand, which sometimes turns to greater employee attrition rate as well.

It has been identified that the brand has set the marketing objective of 320 million Smartphone shipments in the market in order to enhance its profit margin in the competitive sector (Rox, 2018). The brand is also continued to make its efforts to distinguish its Smartphone section by imposing the cutting edge technologies, for example, foldable OLED displays. As discussed in the previous section that the brand is focusing more on trending its product lines with more innovation. Therefore, to stand by its objectives, Samsung is driving forward towards new business related artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) by strengthening its ecosystem depending on Bixby and its 5G technology (News18., 2018). Hence, the brand is making effort to attain its organization goals for its external aspects to introduce its product with utmost innovation.

To stand by the ethical standard, which has been another organisational goal of the company, the management is making the strong effort in terms of imposing a correct code of conduct within the workplace and helping each employee to understand the rules an abidance they need to follow while working for the brand (Kumar, 2015). The employees are given adequate training and learning opportunities to evolve alongside the organization.

Samsung's product ranges cover categories like Smartphones, tablets, cameras, televisions, air conditioners, refrigerators, microwaves, washing machines, and other IT products. In the opinion of Tomczak et al. (2018), the major benefit that Samsung has is that it is a trusted organization as a result of its performance since the last few decades. Although, the brand is accused of imitating Apple’s product lines, yet, the market is also driven strongly by trendy designs and outlooks of electronic models (Bentley-Goode et al. 2017). Therefore, Samsung is getting into the priority list of many US customers as well.  The company is also having the goodwill of delivering fast and quality service to its customer base.

Since Samsung has a diversified product range; therefore, it follows a variety of pricing strategies. In the statement of Camilleri (2018), the brad somewhat follows “Skimming Price”, using this policy, the brand introduces new product lines in the market. For instance, with Galaxy S7 Edge, Samsung had used the skimming pricing strategy in order to get high market value in the initial stage prior to competitors introduce a substitute in the market (Bentley-Goode et al. 2017). Once the product got outdated and competitors had relapse similar range of product line, Samsung immediately drop the price margin of the same product to retain the maximum customer range.  This policy has worked best for Samsung to retain their leading position and uphold the market share for the long time span.  

Palmatier et al. (2016) stated that Samsung is currently present in various fields and retail stores have become one of its major places for distribution. Furthermore, Samsun also has its webshop, which allows customers to identify a product and go through its reviews before ordering it from the website itself. This convenient platform turns out to be quite lucrative for the brand to enhance their sales margin with the passage of time. Moreover, the brand is also present over the e-commerce sites, where shares the portal space of third parties or intermediaries to display its product lines before wider ranges of the customer base (Bentley-Goode et al. 2017). Since, over the time, people are getting more inclined towards digital access, hence, presence in the digital platforms is helping Samsung to gain better reach in the market to enhance its profit margin.

Samsung is making strong use of commercial advertisements. Whether it is an online or offline promotion, the brand has always managed to create advert where its products center the attention and deliver clear purpose or message related to its products to its target customers (Camilleri, 2018). The brand also benefits from the so-called word of mouth promotion as well, which indicates its strong goodwill in the fiercely competitive market. The customers usually recommend others with Samsung’s products after their usage, which ultimately results in raising the interest of new customers to invest in Samsung's product lines (Shaughnessy, 2018).

Conclusion 

Based on the discussion and analysis performed in the preceding sections of the report, the researcher has arrived at a concluding statement by underlining the fact that Samsung is holding a strong market position in the US. The brand is although struggling behind the stiff competition of Apple and the innovation it is coming with. Yet, it is still on the set of creating its individual brand identity in the competitive market and upholding its profit-making position in the US electronic sector. Hence, it can be inferred that Samsung is definitely managed to attain a stable and secure market position in the US. Finally, it may be concluded that well-designed marketing strategies coupled with strong management and objective implementation of the plans will surely contribute towards the attainment of corporate goals of sustainability in the long-run in most cost and time efficient manner.  

References:

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