Samsung Electronics Case Solution

The company is primarily faced with competition from few major companies, namely, Apple, Motorola, Nokia, HTC, etc. and has to focus continually on its competitive advantage to maintain its market share in this highly competitive and focused innovation market. Therefore, the driving forces in the industry are technological changes, product innovation, and convenience. These factors are crucial to not only maintain market share but also enter new markets and attract new customers.

Samsung, unlike many other companies, focused on its core competencies by focusing on manufacturing digital products. The company has continuously invested in chip factories and manufacturing facilities during the period 1998 to 2003. Supply-chain demand issues were addressed swiftly through the addition of 12 manufacturing plants in China in 2003 and the provision of dedicated research and development facilities in India. Apart from this, the company’s key success factors included the constant evolution of its digital products through research and development, powerful promotion and advertising strategies, superior product performance, and usefulness and the ability for customers to share information or data conveniently and on the go.

Samsung has been able to utilize its strengths and convert them into sustainable competitive advantage sources. These strengths include the brand itself i.e. Samsung is a globally recognized brand and the market leader in smartphones. Moreover, excellent technology and hardware integration have enabled the organization to become the preferred brand amongst the smartphone customers. The product line is also diverse with various products available to customers ranging from low priced products to premium top quality products. In other words, Samsung has a product for everyone despite their demographics or income levels. It has been able to penetrate the smartphone market and make smartphones affordable and available to the masses.

Superiority in product design and process efficiency was the epitome of all organizational processes and procedures. The memory chip had been faced with severe Chinese competition and the company needed to respond to these external factors if it wished to remain profitable. Kun Hee Lee recognizes that their abilities and efforts played a pivotal role in the organizations’ success as is seen today. This is evident from the fact that Samsung’s memory division was a bit player in 1987 and years behind Japanese rivals and in 2003 the tables turned, and Samsung was larger regarding size and profits. The semiconductor and memory industry had witnessed strong growth over the previous five decades and Samsung had been able to capitalize on the same. Moreover, the share of communications products was expected to double, and Samsung had to activate its strengths to capture this market.

As compared to Chinese competitors, Samsung had an upper hand regarding technological innovation and organizational skills. Samsung was able to streamline processes and limit the occurrence of defective chips. Initially, Samsung Electronics was the producer of low-end consumer goods, however, after certain structural changes initiated by Kun Hee Lee, the company started transitioning towards high-end products.

Technologically the employees competed amongst themselves as well with teams being formed for the first 64K RAMS.