Samsung's Communication Plan Essay.

Discuss about the Communication Plan of Samsung.

Samsung has positioned its business to be among the world’s leading electronic organization that specializes in manufacturing media and digital appliances and system integration. In the recent years, the company’s innovative and superior quality offerings are recognized globally. From experiencing superior business performance, Samsung has expanded its product lines along with market reach, increased its revenue along with increased market share. The mission of the marketing communication plan of Samsung is to make life better for all its target consumers all over the world (Samsung.com, 2017).

Integrated marketing communication plan can be explained as the part of marketing communication planning that identifies the benefit that has an objective of analyzing the strategic objectives of several communication objectives of a company including direct response, sales promotion, general advertising, and public relations. The objective of the report is to develop an effective marketing communication plan for Samsung Company. The paper will also conduct stakeholder analysis along with developing effective formal and informal communication channels. Moreover, evaluation of these communication channels will be conducted. Though developing efficient communication plan, Samsung has intended to develop innovative technologies and productive business that generates fresh markets, enriches lives of people, and positioned Samsung as a digital leader.

The internal stakeholders of Samsung Company include its employees considering which the company has developed effective communication strategies. Such strategies include conducting employee satisfaction surveys, grievance process systems and maintaining effective labor council. Such communication strategies are developed buy the company in order to maintain high work-life balance among balance, innovative organizational culture, and maintaining workplace diversity (Blakeman 2014).

The external stakeholders of Samsung Company includes consumers, business partners, investors, NGO’s, press, government and local communities. Communication plan of Samsung Company for consumers considers conducting regular consumer satisfaction surveys and their response to the CSR initiatives of the company. Communication process with the business partners includes carrying out external interview, collaboration, and exchange meetings along with conducting best practice workshops (Bostrom et al. 2013). Communication with the local communities can be carried out by means of local community conferences along with communicating through volunteer service centers. Maintaining effective communication with all its stakeholders can facilitate Samsung Company to develop effective communication plan that can increase employee motivation and gain huge attention of its investors and target consumers.

The higher-level management of Samsung is a firm believer of strong values, which holds the key to sound decision-making. The core value statements of the organisation are briefly summarised as follows:

External Stakeholders

People:

In the words of Hill, Jones and Schilling (2014), the employees form the key to assure the success of an organisation. The organisation is dedicated to provide its people with a vast array of opportunities in accomplishing their full potential.

Excellence:

The products in Samsung are developed with passion to strive for excellence and commitment to assure the best quality prevailing in the operating market.

Change:

As commented by Kim, Hong and Kim (2014), in the current era, change is fixed and innovation is mandatory to ensure the survival of an organisation. The organisation constantly estimates the market demands and needs through adequate market research for steering the company to ensure long-term growth in future.

Integrity:

Samsung conducts its business operations in an ethical manner, which assures fairness, interests of the associated stakeholders and full transparency.

Co-prosperity:

Samsung has adopted effective corporate practices by ensuring sustainable social and environmental mechanisms in all the communities, in which it operates.

Samsung has been focused in developing its brand image to be the leader in the global telecommunications industry. It has been observed that Samsung has been involved in modifying its reputation of fast follower, since it follows others by observing the introduction of new technologies in the global markets (Samsung.com 2017). Despite such success, Apple still enjoys competitive edge over Samsung, since it comes up with high technological and innovative products. Therefore, the leaders of Samsung are involved in transforming the strategies and culture of the organisation to be the creative leader in the Smartphone market. This would be achieved with through market research and development.

Samsung makes economies with the help of location choice. This is made by building manufacturers and research and development centres in ideal places at cheaper costs. Samsung outsources labour at cheaper cost from Vietnam and China to reduce its manufacturing cost of products. In the European market, Samsung manufactures its products in Poland, which has an adequate balance of technical knowhow and labour cost (Schlinke and Crain 2013). Hence, it helps in minimising tax payments and delivery costs for Samsung. Along with this, it takes lessons from the market difficulties to find solutions for overcoming the next challenge. Finally, Samsung emphasises on product diversification to deliver maximum value and satisfaction to the customers, as a part of the strategic plan. 

Samsung incurs heavy amount in promoting its products with the help of television commercials and social media. For instance, the logo of Samsung has paraded over Spain for promoting its new galaxy phone. In addition, Samsung has used the Global Mobile Convention in 2011, which has helped in earning public relations from the media (Jung 2014). Furthermore, the organisation places advertisements on the global and regional newspapers to communicate necessary information to the associated stakeholders. However, Samsung needs to concentrate more on social media communication in order to increase the awareness of the customers. Along with this, it needs to communicate with different promotional tools like billboards and YouTube videos for increasing its presence in the global market. 

Corporate Communication of Samsung

The steps involved in the communication event Schedule of Samsung is mentioned under:

The first step is to gather support from the upper management for the reason that the employees can observe that change is vital for them. This is the way in which percentage approval can be attained from upper management is by offering regulator cash pushing updates that can facilitate in decreasing costs.

The next step of the communication plan event of Samsung is to generate need for change for which the change agents can generate support from each organizational level. The management considers communicating with its employees the reason for which certain changes needs taking place (Jung 2014). The company’s communication event will consider not releasing any update unless it has been evaluated thoroughly can decrease the number of technical support call along with poor publicity by the press.

In Samsung Company, technology has a great part in the communication plan. Management off the company can utilize e-mail for launching its communication plan. Moreover, the company can also employ pop-up displays at the time small success is attained. Moreover, company’s intranet can display and communicate the effectives of change, can report the communication issues and the things needs to take place for allowing change to take place in the company. To decrease negative comments regarding the company’ offerings, Samsung can develop frequently asked questions for answering any negativity that might take place. Managers of Samsung must be involved with its employees for dealing with any negativity-taking place.

A comprehensive integrated plan of marketing communication intends to develop certain objectives. The Samsung Company has set certain objectives for developing effective marketing communication plan implementation. Such marketing communication plan objectives are mentioned under:

• The objective for the marketing communication campaign of Samsung is to increase consumer awareness by the rate of 25%.
• Another objective of the marketing communication plan will be to increase its reach to its target audiences through communicating with them twice a week at the time of the marketing campaign’s first quarter. The objective of the marketing communication plan is required to be measurable and specific (Naeem et al. 2013).

Considering the fact that the employees and consumers of Samsung belongs to a diverse culture, the corporate culture of the company considers diversifying and constantly innovating, operating business in perpetual crisis and always remaining prepared with back-up. Communication plan of Samsung based on Hofstede’s cultural dimension models is described below:

Power Distance: Communication strategy has been prepared by Samsung considering that having a score of 60, certain nations in which company has its business has a hierarchical society and people there intends to follow a hierarchical order (Kim et al. 2014).

Individualism: Attaining a score of 18, several nations in which the company has its business operations serves as a collectivist society. It centers on close extended term commitment to the family.

Mission Statement

Masculinity/Femininity: The Company operates in certain nations that have a score of 39 in being a feminine society (Hill et al. 2014). Considering that under this culture people values solidarity, equality and quality in their work lives. Samsung company tends to solve conflicts are resolved through negotiation and compromise.

Uncertainty Avoidance: Few nations in which Samsung has its business have a score of 85 that makes it among the most uncertainty avoiding nations in the world. Considering the same, Samsung maintains strong codes of behavior and belief. Corporate communication culture of the company in such nations is developed in consideration that they have inner urge to remain busy and work hard, punctuality and precision by making it a norm.

Formal Communication Channels

• Passing Circular: Samsung Company must consider developing effective communication plan through passing circulars among the target audiences. Print circulars are provided to target audiences that will intend to promote local deals (Csikósová et al. 2014). Online print circulars can be provided to the target consumers through sending e-mails to them regarding new product specifications or several product innovations. Samsung must consider limitations of communicating through passing circulars as this medium of communication can be informal for which some target audiences might tend to ignore them.

Informal Communication Channels

• Television Advertisement: Samsung Company must use effective communication channel such as television advertisements in order to generate high brand awareness. Samsung along with the advertising agency Chile internationally can decide to release an innovative marketing communication campaign in the previous year. The company can communicate their brand message to its target audiences through developing videos that will present the exciting features of all its Smartphone product ranges along with their qualities (Schlinke and Crain 2013).
• Internet Marketing: Online banner advertising increases consumer awareness through the Face book and YouTube communication channels. For the reason that, YouTube and Face book serves as among the largest online site for social networking and communication for Samsung electronic gadgets. Considering this communication strategy, it can be stated that the company will be able to provide tough competition to Htc and Nokia on the communication channels such as Face book and YouTube for promotions (Barger and Labrecque 2013). One the major disadvantage of employing the internet-marketing medium is that such communication medium decreases face-to-face contact that might not facilitate the company to develop strong rapport with all its target audience. For this reason, it might lose consumers in comparison to its traditional competitors those are involved in superior consumer service strategies.
• Sales Promotion: In order to attract the target consumer base, Samsung Company must offer different bonus pack for its consumers those consider purchasing new Samsung electronic gadget in exchange for their old electronic gadgets in order to attain the value for their old electronic gadget value that can help in saving their shopping money. It can be gathered that the entire target consumer can be able to save maximum amount of $100 through the “Best Buy” option by mean of trading their old electronic gadgets (Bacile et al. 2014). Sales promotion can have certain disadvantages that must be considered by Samsung. For instance, if there are repeated promotions for sales of certain products can make its target audiences suspect that the product might have less sales because of its inferior quality.
• Public Relations: Featuring the specifications of all its electronic products at the time of Oscar award function before releasing the gadget must be released. The cell phones developed by the company are positioned to capture the world’s most popular selfies taken by the celebrities attending the award function. Whether or not all the target audiences watched the award function, it can be visible that all the popular celebrities are involved in twitter-crashing, taking record breaking Oscar selfie captured with the newly launched cell phones of the Samsung Company (Colleoni 2013). It can be observed that every time all the popular celebrities are on stage during the award ceremony, they take selfies with the cell phones of Samsung long with live twitting at the time of show hosting. Celebrity endorsement serves as an effective strategy of effective public relations strategy. "Celebrity endorsement" communication strategy through endorsing celebrities while using the company’s products is deemed an effective marketing communication plan. This is because, in its latest and campaign, Samsung advertised their recently launched cell phone model at an Oscar award function in the previous years. One of the major disadvantages of the public relations advertisement is that if the promotional, messages those are to be communicated are not carefully developed and distributed in the media vehicle then the final message might not be communicated as per the plans of the marketer.
• Direct Marketing: Samsung Company must consider implementing direct marketing strategies based on which the company can come up with a communication campaign for promoting its entire electronics product segment. The objective of the direct marketing strategy of Samsung Company will be to be based on its demographic profile of target audiences within the age group of 15-50 years along with e-mailing postcard for their new electronics product segment (Austin and Pinkleton 2015).One of the major limitation that must be considered by Samsung while employing this communication channels is that the target audiences might not appreciate the privacy intuition or the mass of communication and might treat them as junk mails received by them regularly.
• Personal Selling: Samsung Electronics Company has several promotional activities in order to gain increasing number of loyal consumers from all over the world. Among the most efficient promotional activities for all is range of electronic products can be the personal selling strategy of “Samsung Sense Academic Festival” (Brunello 2013). This personal selling event can effectively help in selling its entire new electronic product segment based on one-to-one basis. In order to deal with increasing competition the company must pay increased attention on developing personal selling strategies for its entire electronic product segment for contact point of all its consumers might not be same. One of the major limitations that Samsung must consider while employing this communication channel is that personal selling strategy involves high costs in measuring the effectiveness of program.

Evaluation of the marketing communication plan strategies serves as a way to analyze whether the communication plan developed by Samsung Company is effective enough to grab a large target audience base. Certain strategies that can be implemented by Samsung Company to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing communication channels in increasing sales, market share and consumer base that is mentioned under:

Effectiveness Analysis of Advertising and Personal Selling: The effectiveness of communication through personal selling and advertising can be evaluated through two methods. Effectiveness of the advertising communication stategy can be measured in accordance to both sales and communication impacts. Effectiveness can be measured through analyzing the ways in which the advertisement has affected consumer re-purchase, product awareness, knowledge and preferences (Belch et al. 2014). If the demands are increased for particular product of Samsung Company or consumer loyalty has increased along with increase on market shares of the company it can be stated that the communication plan of the company has been highly effective on grabbing attention of the target audiences.

Measuring effectiveness of formal and the informal communication channels employed can be through measuring their impact on increasing sales of Samsung Company. However, it is also agreed that measuring the type of communication plan effectiveness in consideration to sales impact is quite complex as Samsung should also consider several things that has an impact on the consumer purchasing decisions other than advertising strategy impacts (Batra and Keller 2016). Increase in the market share of all the electronic gadgets of Samsung in the target market will indicate superior effectiveness of all the strategies implemented through communication channels. Effectiveness of the communication plan can be measured through analyzing whether the plan has been effective enough in addressing the previously set marketing communications plan objectives.

Strategic Plan

Conclusion

The objective of the report was to develop an effective marketing communication plan for Samsung Company. The paper also conducted stakeholder analysis along with developing effective formal and informal communication channels. From the analysis of the paper, it was gathered that communication plan for the Samsung Company can be developed based on the analysis of the target audiences and the culture to which they belong. With increased demand of the effective and light electronic gadgets of the company, the target consumers try to save their time and ease of product use. The marketing communication plan of the company intends to reshape the behaviors of the consumers to generate a new lifestyle based on the company’s gear product.

The company can communicate their brand message to its target audiences through developing videos that will present the exciting features of all its Smartphone product ranges along with their qualities. Samsung Company must offer different bonus pack for its consumers those consider purchasing new Samsung electronic gadget in exchange for their old electronic gadgets in order to attain the value for their old electronic gadget value that can help in saving their shopping money. "Celebrity endorsement" communication strategy through endorsing celebrities while using the company’s products is deemed an effective marketing communication plan. In order to deal with increasing competition the company must pay increased attention on developing personal selling strategies for its entire electronic product segment for contact point of all its consumers might not be same.

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