samsung case study 2020

Samsung Electronics—A Detailed Case Study

Devashish Shrivastava

Samsung is a South Korean electronic gadget manufacturer in Samsung Town, Seoul. Samsung Electronics was established by Lee Byung-Chul in 1938 as an exchanging organization.

We all know this information about Samsung. Don't we? But what we don't know? Do you know how much Samsung has grown in these years? What are the Future Plans of Samsung? How much Samsung invested in its R&D? What difficulties did the company face coming all this way? What is the history behind this multinational conglomerate?

Don't worry we got you covered. We have penned down a detailed Case Study on Samsung Electronics. Let's find out in this thoroughly studied Samsung case study.

Let's start the detailed case study from here.

Samsung entered the electronics industry in the late 1960s and the development and shipbuilding ventures in the mid-1970. Following Lee's demise in 1987, Samsung was divided into five business groups - Samsung Group, Shinsegae Group, CJ Group, Hansol Group and Joongang Group.

Some of the notable Samsung industrial subsidiaries include Samsung Electronics, Samsung Heavy Industries  Samsung Engineering, and Samsung C&T (separately the world's 13th and 36th biggest development companies). Other notable subsidiaries include Samsung Life Insurance, Samsung Everland, and Cheil Worldwide.

Samsung has a powerful influence on South Korea's monetary advancement, legislative issues, media, and culture. Samsung has played a significant role behind the "Miracle on the Han River". Its subsidiary organizations produce around a fifth of South Korea's complete exports. Samsung's revenue was equivalent to 17% of South Korea's $1,082 billion GDP.

History of Samsung Electronics Samsung's Business Strategy Samsung Rides High In India Business Growth in India Future Plans of Samsung FAQ's

History of Samsung Electronics

1938 (Inception of Samsung)-

• In 1938, Lee Byung-Chul (1910–1987) of a huge landowning family in the Uiryeong region moved to nearby city Daegu and established Samsung Sanghoe.
• Samsung began as a little exchanging organization with forty representatives situated in Su-dong. It managed dried fish, privately developed staple goods and noodles. The organization succeeded and Lee moved its head office to Seoul in 1947.
• When the Korean War broke out, Lee had to leave Seoul. He began a sugar processing plant in Busan named Cheil Jedang. In 1954, Lee founded Cheil Mojik. It was the biggest woollen factory in the country.
• Samsung broadened into a wide range of territories. Lee wanted to build Samsung as a pioneer in a wide scope of enterprises.
• In 1947, Cho Hong-Jai, the Hyosung gathering's organizer, put resources into another organization called Samsung Mulsan Gongsa or the Samsung Trading Corporation with Samsung's founder Lee Byung-Chul. The exchanging firm developed into the present-day Samsung C&T Corporation .
• After few years in business, Cho and Lee got separated due to the differences in the management style. In 1980, Samsung acquired the Gumi-based Hanguk Jeonja Tongsin and entered the telecommunications market . During the initial days, it sold switchboards.

1987 (Demise of Lee Byung-Chul)-

• After Lee's demise in 1987, the Samsung Group was divided into four business gatherings—Samsung Group, Shinsegae Group, CJ Group, and the Hansol Group.
• One Hansol Group agent stated, "Just individuals uninformed of the laws overseeing the business world could think something so ridiculous," while also adding, "When Hansol got separated from the Samsung Group in 1991, it cut off all installment assurances and offer holding ties with Samsung subsidiaries."
• One Hansol Group source attested, "Hansol, Shinsegae, and CJ have been under autonomous administration since their particular divisions from the Samsung Group."
• One Shinsegae retail chain official executive stated, "Shinsegae has no installment certifications related to the Samsung Group." In 1982, it constructed a TV get-together plant in Portugal, a plant in New York in 1984, a plant in Tokyo in 1985 and an office in England in 1996.

2000 (Samsung in 20th Century)

• In 2000, Samsung opened a development center in Warsaw, Poland. It started with set-top-box technology before moving to TV and cell phones. The cell phone stage was created with accomplices and formally propelled with the first Samsung Solstice line of gadgets and different subordinates in 2008. It later emerged into the Samsung Galaxy line of gadgets that is Notes, Edge, and other models.
• In 2010, Samsung declared a ten-year development system based on five businesses. One of these organizations was to be centered around bio-pharmaceuticals in which ₩2,100 billion was invested.
• In the first quarter of 2012, Samsung Electronics turned into the world's biggest cell phone creator by unit deals, surpassing Nokia which had been the market chief since 1998.
• In 2015, Samsung was granted U.S. patents as compared to other organizations like IBM , Google , Sony, Microsoft , and Apple. Samsung got 7,679 utility licenses before 11 December 2015.
• On 2 August 2016, Samsung Electronics revealed the Galaxy Note7 smartphone, which went on sale on 19 August 2016. At the beginning of September 2016, it halted its selling of smartphones due to some problems with the smartphones. Samsung suspended the selling of the smartphones and recalled its units for inspection.
• This happened after certain units of the telephones had batteries with a deformity that made them produce extreme warmth, prompting flames and blasts. Samsung replaced the reviewed units of the telephones with a new version. It was later found that the new version of the Galaxy Note 7 also had the same battery deformity.
• Samsung recalled all Galaxy Note7 cell phones worldwide on 10 October 2016 and permanently ended its production on the same day.

Samsung's Business Strategy

Great business strategies have been applied by Samsung over the years. Not very far back, Samsung wasn't as famous as now. Samsung has now advanced so much that it is the principal contender of Apple Inc. Samsung is the biggest tech business by income and the seventh most significant brand today. The showcasing procedure it applied encouraged Samsung electronics to turn into an industry driving innovation organization.

The Samsung marketing strategy was one of the best systems at any point because it helped a cost-driven organization to change its structure and become a power producer. Due to the consistently changing tastes of purchasers in the innovation business, organizations needed to pursue the pace and offer dynamic and advancing devices to their clients. In this way, Samsung additionally needed to change to pick up the high ground available, and the new Samsung showcasing methodology was the way to advancement.

Some of the business strategies of Samsung Electronics are listed below:

Promotional Mix Of Samsung

Samsung has arrived at fantastic statures with its cell phones which helped the brand to turn into an image of value and unwavering quality for its purchasers.

Samsung Marketing Mix Pricing Strategy and Samsung Advertising Methodology are the two estimating techniques used by the organization. Other than its items, Samsung is celebrated for its customer support . However, item variety is the most dominant part of the promoting blend of Samsung.

• Skimming Price

Like Apple , Samsung uses skimming costs to pick up the high ground over its rivals. For example, Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge are the brand's new results of Samsung conveying the trademark "Next is Now" and guaranteeing that they are the best smartphone maker at any point made.

What will happen when different contenders will dispatch a cell phone with indistinguishable highlights? Straightforward. Samsung will bring down the cost and effectively steal the customers from its competitors.

• Focused Pricing

Samsung experiences issues in increasing an edge over its rivals with different items. Doubtlessly, Samsung is a credible brand. However, regarding home appliances, it can't be in any way, shape, or form outperform LG In the cameras segment and other home appliance units. Also, Samsung cannot compete with Canon and Nikon.

For Samsung to withstand this savage challenge, it's crucial to utilize aggressive valuing of its products. Moreover, Samsung is neither a newbie underway nor non-inventive. For the most part, it is often the first company to be innovative with its products and present a change among its competitors.

• Putting in Samsung Marketing Strategy

Samsung uses divert advertising strategies. Retailers who present the innovation chain will undoubtedly incorporate Samsung in their rundown on account of the firm being a world-celebrated brand. Samsung can likewise fill in as an option for the purchasers. The circulation is a convincing piece of the Samsung promoting methodology.

In specific urban communities, Samsung has an agreement with a solitary dissemination organization that circulates the items all through the city. For example, Mumbai is an incredible case where Samsung conveys its products through a solitary organization.

Samsung Rides High In India

The greatest leader by far in the smartphone business is Samsung Electronics, the world's greatest cell phone and TV producer.

Samsung is India's greatest, versatile brand. It is the developer of Reliance Jio's 4G LTE system — the greatest and busiest information system on the planet.

Discernments, advertise wars, openings, rivalry — now and then from conventional remote adversaries, from nearby upstarts, and emerging Chinese brands trouble Samsung.

Be that as it may, every time Samsung has had the option to fight off the dangers and hold its ground. It has been leading the market in the TV fragment for more than 12 years and in the versatile business for a long time after it toppled Nokia in 2012.

Riding The Smartphone Wave

As indicated by some statistical surveying firms following cell phone shipments, Chinese firm Xiaomi is creeping nearer — or has even surpassed Samsung after December 2017 quarter.

While for the entire year 2017, Samsung was No. 1 in the cell phone space, IDC information indicated Xiaomi drove the last quarter with 26.8% piece of the overall industry. Samsung was at 24.2%. Different players, for example, Vivo, Lenovo, and Oppo stayed at 6.5, 5.6, and 4.9%, separately.

Warsi, who has been working with Samsung for as far back as 12 years and has as of late been advanced as Global Vice President, is unflinching, "These difficulties offer us the chance to work more earnestly for our customers and with our accomplices.

Furthermore, shoppers love marks that emphasis on them," he says. "Samsung is India's No. 1 cell phone organization crosswise over sections — premium, mid and reasonable. That is what makes a difference."

Statistical surveying firm GfK tracks disconnected offers of handsets — which make up around 70% of the market — in which Xiaomi is attempting to make advances.

Samsung had a 42% worth piece of the overall industry in the general cell phone showcase in the nation in 2019 and 55% in the superior fragment as indicated by GfK. An industry official who would not like to be named says that India must be Samsung's greatest market by large volumes.

The thought currently is to become the cell phone business which gets more worth. As indicated by reports, Samsung India's incomes from cell phone deals in 2018-19 remained at an astounding INR 34,300 crore. That is over $5.5 billion and development of 27%. Samsung's nearest adversaries are talking about incomes of $1 billion in India, going up to $2 billion.

Samsung is the world's largest manufacturer of consumer electronics by revenue. As of 2019, Samsung Electronics is the world's second-largest technology company by revenue, and its market capitalization stood at US$301.65 billion, the 18th largest in the world.

Shopper Is At The Center

Samsung is a worldwide advancement powerhouse that leads the patterns. It profoundly put resources in India — 22 years of connections in the exchange, and tremendous interests in neighborhood R&D . It has around 10,000 architects working in research offices in India and is perhaps the greatest scout from the IITs.

"Samsung has a solid brand picture in India, as it has been available in various customer electronic portions with quality items for quite a while now. The brand is trusted because of its long history in the nation, dish India nearness, and a vigorous after deals support for buyers," says Shobhit Srivastava, explore expert at Counterpoint Research.

Indeed, even an item fizzle of the size of the Galaxy Note7 in September 2016 couldn't affect Samsung. While the organization was fast enough to get back to every one of the units that had been sold and cease the gadget totally, Samsung's activities and ensuing effective dispatches of leads like Galaxy S8, Note8, the Galaxy S9 and S9+, which were propelled in February, rescued the harm and raised the profile of the brand as a dependable organization. "They rushed to concede their error and that helped them interface with the perceiving clients of today far superior," says Koshy.

Make For India

Samsung's system 'Make for India', which resounds with the administration's ' Make in India ' activity, was conceived in the late spring of 2015. Samsung India's new President and CEO, H.C. Hong, had recently moved in from Latin America and was looked with the prompt tough assignment of fighting a firm challenge from two nearby versatile organizations that is Micromax and Intex.

Samsung's customer hardware business containing TVs, fridges, and other advanced machines were additionally confronting challenges from Sony and LG.

Around a similar time, the legislature of India propelled its 'Make in India' activity. "In this way, Mr. Hong revealed to us we have been doing Make in India effectively for two decades. What we should concentrate on widely to remain on top of things is Make for India (MFI)," says Dipesh Shah, Managing Director of Samsung R&D Institute in Bengaluru, the greatest R&D community for Samsung outside Korea.

Truth be told, the R&D focuses in India contribute intensely to the improvement of worldwide items, for example, Samsung's lead cell phones (Galaxy S9 and S9+). While different organizations focused on propelling their worldwide items in India, Samsung went about rethinking items for the nation at its R&D focuses.

India is significant for Samsung, thinking of the nation as the second biggest cell phone showcase on the planet today, and it is possibly the greatest undiscovered market for some advanced apparatuses. The entrance of iceboxes, clothes washers, microwaves, and forced air systems are appallingly low because of components like the accessibility of continuous power, social conduct, way of life, and earnings.

Business Growth in India

Samsung India crossed the INR 50,000 crore deals achievement in 2017 according to the simply distributed organization filings with the Registrar of Companies (RoC), uniting its situation as the nation's biggest unadulterated play purchaser products MNC. The Korean mammoth's all-out salary, including turnover and other pay, developed by 15.5% to INR 55,511.9 crore in FY 2017 from INR 48,053 crore in the earlier year regardless of Chinese organizations making genuine advances into the Indian cell phone advertise.

Samsung's cell phone business developed deals at 26.7% to INR 34,261 crore, while the home apparatus business developed by 12% to INR 6,395.6 crore. The organization's TV business stayed dormant at INR 4,481.2 crore even though Samsung held the market initiative.

The organization's net benefit developed at a quicker pace of 38% to INR 4,156.2 crore which industry examiners credited to more concentrate on premium models crosswise over cell phones and customer hardware having higher edges.

Samsung, in its filings, said the 'Make for India' activity, through which a large portion of the items was planned and created given the Indian customer's needs, has been an enormous achievement and a major factor behind the development.

All the units at Samsung India improved their gross productivity with the TV business dramatically increasing it and the home machine business nearly trebling it. The cell phone business was the biggest supporter of gross benefit having developed by 44% in FY17 at INR 5,005.9 crore.

Future Plans of Samsung

Samsung has arranged a new venture of around INR 2,500 crore to transform its India tasks into a center for parts business, two senior industry administrators said. The ventures could be increased further, they included. The Korean organization has set up two new parts fabricating substances in India—Samsung Display Co and Samsung SDI India—for the generation of cell phones and batteries.

Independently, Samsung's funding arm—Samsung Venture Investment Corp—has set up activities in India to support new companies in gadgets equipment and programming organizations. The segment organizations will supply items to both Samsung India and other cell phone merchants who as of now source parts from Samsung's abroad tasks.

Samsung sees a big opportunity for segment business considering the administration's push on 'Make in India' where expense on imported cell phone segments and purchaser hardware is going up, the administrators said.

Samsung is likewise pitching to the administration for fare impetuses so it can even fare segments from India. Samsung Display has just marked an update of comprehension with the Uttar Pradesh government for an INR 1,500 crore plant for assembling telephone show to be operational by one year from now April. The plant will come up in Noida, the administrators said.

Samsung SDI India has plans to set up an assembling unit in India for lithium-particle batteries after the organization was drifted a month ago, according to its administrative filings with the Registrar of Companies (RoC).

As per the administrators, Samsung SDI has plans to contribute another INR 900-1,000 crore and will settle the plans after counseling with the Center post general races. These speculations come after it introduced the world's biggest cell phone fabricating unit in India a year ago at an all-out cost of INR 4,915 crore. It is expected to be completed in 2020.

That's all for now. Share your learnings and findings. What did you learn from this article? Which information surprised or amused you the most? Feel free to reach us and share your feedback. We would love to hear from you. Do comment us in the comments section below. Happy Reading.

Who is the owner of Samsung Electronics?

Samsung Group is the owner of Samsung Electronics.

Who is the Founder of Samsung?

Samsung Electronics was established by Lee Byung-Chul (1910–1987) in 1938 as an exchanging organization.

Who is the current CEO of Samsung?

Kim, Ki Nam, Kim, Hyun Suk and Koh, Dong Jin are the current CEO of multinational conglomerate Samsung.

What does Samsung Electronics make?

Samsung Electronics produces smartphones, TV sets, laptops, solid-state drives, digital cinemas screens, etc.

Is Samsung a Chinese company?

Samsung is a South Korean electronic gadget manufacturer in Samsung Town, Seoul.

What is Samsung's strategy?

• Promotional Mix of Samsung

How large is Samsung Electronics?

Samsung is the world's largest manufacturer of consumer electronics by revenue. Samsung Electronics is the world's second-largest technology company by revenue, and its market capitalization stood at US$ 301.65 billion, the 18th largest in the world.

What are the future plans of Samsung Company?

Samsung has arranged a new venture of around INR 2,500 crore to transform its India tasks into a center for parts business, two senior industry administrators said.

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Samsung vs. Apple: Inside The Brutal War For Smartphone Dominance

An excerpt from samsung rising by geoffrey cain.

I n 2005, Chang-Gyu Hwang —president of Samsung’s semiconductor and memory business—traveled with two fellow executives to Palo Alto, to the home of Steve Jobs.   

“I met him with the solution to Apple’s life-or-death problem hidden deep in my pocket,” Hwang wrote.            

In the course of their meeting, he pulled out the NAND flash memory, as it was called, and put it on the table. He called it “my trump card.”   

His pitch? Flash memory was a much more lightweight and efficient storage device than the traditional hard disk. And Samsung was one of few companies that could guarantee a rock-solid supply.

“This is exactly what I wanted,” Jobs said of Samsung’s flash memory, according to Hwang. He agreed to make Samsung the sole supplier of flash memory for the iPod. 

“It was the moment that marked the beginning of our dominance in the U.S. semiconductor market,” Hwang wrote. With that, Samsung had a launchpad from which to eventually get into smartphones, when they came out.

They would go from supplier to competitor.

Jobs was livid when Samsung released its smartphone in 2009. As he told biographer Walter Isaacson, he wanted to launch “thermonuclear war” on Android, the operating system used in Samsung phones. Samsung was the Apple iPhone chip supplier that dared to compete directly against Apple by making a similar-looking smartphone, and with the Android operating system, which Jobs abhorred. Jobs was prepared to sue. Tim Cook, as Apple’s supply chain expert, was wary of endangering the relationship with a supplier that Apple depended on.

When Samsung vice chairman Jay Lee—who was then the company’s chief customer officer—visited the Cupertino campus, Jobs and Cook expressed their concerns to him. Apple drafted a proposal to license some of its patents to Samsung for $30 per smartphone and $40 per tablet, with a 20 percent discount for cross-licensing Samsung’s portfolio back to Apple. For 2010 that revenue would have come to $250 million. 

Left: Steve Jobs unveils the new iPhone 4 at an Apple conference in June 2010. Right: Chang-Gyu Hwang speaks at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in March 2015.

In the end, Samsung’s lawyers reversed the offer. Since Apple was copying Samsung’s patents, they argued, Apple had to pay Samsung.                     

In April 2011, Apple filed multiple lawsuits, spanning dozens of countries, against Samsung for patent infringement. It demanded $2.5 billion in damages. Samsung quickly countersued for infringement of five patents relating to its wireless and data transmission technology.

The war was on.

Samsung executives felt Apple was trying to create a monopoly with generic patents like the iPad’s black rounded rectangle shape, a patent so silly that a court threw it out. “We are going to patent it all,” Jobs once said. He also blatantly mocked Samsung and other competitors, calling their larger phones “Hummers.” “No one’s going to buy that,” he said at a press conference in July 2010.

Samsung’s management team didn’t take Jobs’ attack lightly.

“I am talking to you on a phone right now that Apple just copied,” Brian Wallace, Samsung’s former vice president for strategic marketing, told me years later. “I’ve got a Note Edge. It’s a giant fuckin’ phone that Steve Jobs made fun of. Who was right? Samsung was right.”

Samsung’s greatest strength was its ability to manufacture superior hardware, faster than any of its competitors, through its vast, strict, top-down management system and its superior supply chain.

But the work of the marketers at Samsung was frustratingly subpar.

Samsung didn’t use people in its commercials—“just product and voiceover and talking about the product benefit,” said Samsung’s chief marketing officer, Todd Pendleton. Rather than pitch consumers on why Samsung was great, marketing stories were framed around the telecom carriers—“telling a story around their network and why their network is great.”

The South Korean headquarters, meanwhile, sent over goofy and culturally inappropriate commercials that incited rebellion among the Americans on staff. “They wanted us to use butterflies,” said former marketing vice president Clyde Roberson. He called the ads “Hello Kitty.”

“I am talking to you on a phone right now that Apple just copied,” said Brian Wallace, Samsung’s former vice president for strategic marketing. “It’s a giant phone that Steve Jobs made fun of. Who was right? Samsung was right.”

“We need more creativity!” Dale Sohn, the CEO of Samsung Telecommunications America, the Texas mobile phone office, exclaimed in a meeting in 2010, according to a senior manager who was present. Dale reported to mobile chief J.K. Shin. He had been tasked with turning things around in America, Samsung’s toughest market, given the iPhone’s huge popularity. “I want someone who’s got tattoos all over his arms and earrings!”

When Dale put out a call for a new chief marketing officer, a headhunter zeroed in on Pendleton. Pendleton had been an unconventional marketer at Nike, an impresario and master brand builder. He had been offbeat and irreverent in the ads he crafted and sharp and to the point in the way he communicated.

Todd, however, had never worked at a tech company before and didn’t know the industry. As a tech specialist, the company reached out to a former BlackBerry digital marketer named Brian Wallace.

Pendleton and Wallace quickly got to work. The two marketing executives brought aboard thirty-six marketers and treated the office as a black-box operation. “We had to be somewhat insular to be able to pull some of this stuff off,” said a team member. They were worried about meddling from South Korea’s bureaucracy. Dale provided air cover from headquarters, giving them an unusual degree of latitude and space to get their work done.

In 2011, at Samsung’s U.S. headquarters, Pendleton gathered about fifty people into a meeting. He approached the whiteboard and wrote: “Samsung = ?”

“Who are we?” he asked. “What do we stand for?” Then he went around the room and asked everyone to fill in their idea. “I got about 50 different answers,” he said. For Todd Pendleton, it was alarming. “If we can’t answer [that] as employees, consumers are not going to know who we are.”

On a chart of competitors in their space, with “style” for the vertical and “innovation” for the horizontal axis, they placed Apple and Sony in the upper-right quadrant, marking them as both stylish and innovative.

Samsung, on the other hand, still lacked brand power: It was raised only slightly on the style axis, while it was far to the left on the innovation axis. In other words, consumers saw Samsung as having little of either. “Less stylish, less innovative.” “More functional.” “Good quality and value.” With Apple and Sony commanding and fiercely protecting that stylish and innovative space, could Samsung find an opening?

In focus groups and surveys, the marketers noticed, there was a growing divide between two camps: those who used Apple’s iPhones and those who used smartphones from HTC, Samsung, and Nokia, which ran Google’s quickly growing open-source operating system, Android.

If Walls Could Talk: Samsung's headquarters in Mountain View, California.

“Android people consider themselves to be smarter than Apple people,” a marketer under Todd concluded from his data. In fact, the team had to split up focus groups that included both Apple and Android fans, as they’d get particularly raucous and unproductive. There was always at least one Apple fan in the room who scolded the Android fans, and vice versa, with Android users pointing out how much more flexible and customizable their operating system was. “There was this growing base of Android users who could become a tribe,” Brian Wallace said, crunching a new trend in the social-media chatter. “But they needed a leader.”                                          

Samsung wanted to be that leader.   

Pendleton showed his colleagues side-by-side hardware comparisons between the iPhone and the Galaxy phone in The Wall Street Journal, which showed Samsung leading in a number of areas. The problem was that Samsung, up to this point, was not attempting to tell a story. Apple was commanding the narrative: It had the cult of Steve Jobs, a massive following, and glowing media coverage, and it had unleashed a barrage of aggressive legal action arguing that Samsung was a copycat in terms of new products and innovation.

Could Samsung reverse the narrative? What if its Android phones were actually the smart person’s alternative to the iPhone, and Steve Jobs’s worshippers were the mindless followers?

The outcome of the lawsuits—showing that this or that square, icon, or color wasn’t copied—wasn’t the concern of Todd’s team. More urgent was the big-picture narrative; that is what built emotional appeal for the customer. The court case was only one aspect of the Samsung war; final victory, they knew, would go to the company that told the best story to the public.

Because Apple was an important Samsung customer, the executives at headquarters were pushing for a cautious approach. They wanted to take down each competitor, from HTC to Motorola to BlackBerry to Apple, one by one over the next five years.

Dale informed Todd and his team that five years was too long a time period to overtake Apple. He shortened the time frame to two years, on orders from Samsung headquarters. In fact, the team completed their work in eighteen months.

Samsung debuted its ‘Next Big Thing’ campaign promoting the Galaxy S II in 2011.

By attacking Apple head-on, Samsung’s marketers thought they could establish themselves as the challenger brand, turning the competition with Apple into a Coke-versus-Pepsi war for the smartphone world. But how do you attack Apple without looking petty, without giving it free advertising, without acting like the smaller dog in the pack who barks the loudest and then gets laughed at?

The team turned to a consultant named Joe Crump, senior vice president for strategy and planning at Razorfish, one of the world’s largest interactive agencies, to help them convey the depth of the brand problem in America to Samsung’s senior executives. Crump had an idea to get that across: He’d send camera crews around Times Square, each carrying two duffel bags. The first bag, people on the street would be told, contained the next unreleased iPhone. The other had a Samsung phone.

“What would you give us for each?”

Here was the response to the question when they thought the bag contained the new, unreleased iPhone: “I’d give you my brand new BMW. . . . I’d give you ten thousand dollars. . . . I’d give you my sister.” And the response for the Galaxy: “I don’t know. Five bucks?” One guy offered his half-eaten ice cream cone. 

“The Samsung [response] was just blistering,” Brian recalled. “We had to even take some of it out because it was just so harsh.”

A visiting delegation of South Korean executives huddled in a conference room to watch the video of these Times Square interactions. They were aghast. Suddenly Pendleton had their ear. The research—the field testing—had been done for internal consumption only. It was designed by Pendleton to get the South Korean executives to grasp the size of the problem.

Step two was to ensure that the economics of the coming marketing war on Apple made sense. Samsung had built a carrier-driven model, jumping through hoops to ensure that Sprint and AT&T received their own customized Galaxy phones to sell, using Samsung’s marketing money. If Todd pulled a maneuver too soon, swarms of customers might show up at AT&T stores—AT&T was the exclusive carrier for the iPhone at the time—only to have the advertising throughout the stores nudge them toward Apple.

The solution? To redirect Samsung’s marketing budget. At the time, Samsung was putting about 70 percent of its U.S. smartphone budget in so-called marketing development funds (MDFs), which were cash piles allocated to the carriers for advertising and rebates. About 30 percent of the budget went to Samsung’s own branding efforts. Pendleton’s team convinced Dale Sohn to reverse the figures: to put 70 percent behind Samsung’s own efforts and devote 30 percent to the carriers.

What would you give for the new, unreleased iPhone? “I’d give you my brand new BMW. . . . I’d give you ten thousand dollars. . . . I’d give you my sister.” And the response for the Galaxy? “I don’t know. Five bucks?”

Once Samsung had the marketing budget to reach out directly to customers, Pendleton could initiate step three: hiring an ad agency. He annoyed Samsung headquarters by going around their established Madison Avenue and Seoul agencies and instead putting in a call to relative newcomer 72andSunny, a boutique advertising firm with offices in Los Angeles, New York, and Amsterdam that had a special zing for cultural marketing.

Todd’s team chose 72andSunny specifically for its edginess. On a conference call with 72andSunny, he laid out Samsung’s goal, as handed down by Dale Sohn.

“I expect us to be number one in a couple years.”

The creative executives at 72andSunny got to work and churned out their first approach for Pendleton, who was present at the shoots and the editing, eager to maintain his creative hand. In one early version of a commercial, two characters waiting in line outside an Apple store had a conversation about the features and quality of their Apple and Samsung phones, followed by a cut to another scene of two characters talking about their phones.

It was slow, boring, and dull. Samsung’s bid to take on Apple, Todd’s team feared, would be finished before it had even started.

“We don’t have a campaign here, guys,” Pendleton said.

With the holiday shopping season closing in, the only solution was to chop up and redo the film then and there. During a frantic all-nighter, someone in the room suggested that they turn the commercial into a single scene, rather than two separate, awkward, forced moments of chatter between disparate characters.

The new commercial was completed the next afternoon.

It started, as before, with a line of apparent Apple lemmings waiting all night around a street corner for the release of the next big iThing—presumably an iPhone, though Apple was never mentioned by name.

“Guys, I’m so amped I can stay here for three weeks,” says an apparent Apple idolater.

No longer was the smartphone war a battle between Apple and a tangle of obscure Android me-too phones. Now it was a two-horse race. Everyone else had fallen by the wayside.

One guy notices a woman on a sidewalk tapping away at some weird gadget that— what? —doesn’t look like an iPhone.

“Whoa, what does she got there?”

Then another pedestrian hails a taxi on the sidewalk, holding the mystery device.

“Hey, bro, can we see your phone?” The mob of Apple fans snatch the device and pore over its hardware and features. “It’s a Samsung Galaxy,” the pedestrian tells them. “Check out the screen on this thing—it’s huge.”        

What is this thing?

“It’s a Samsung,” they repeat to each other. “Samsung?”

“It’s a Galaxy S II. This phone is amazing,” says the Samsung guy, showing off his smartphone before getting into a taxi, bidding farewell to the crowd of Apple zombies. 

The message? You don’t need to wait in line. You don’t need to follow the hype.

“The Next Big Thing Is Already Here,” the commercial finishes.

“God damn!” Todd exclaimed after looking at it. “We’ve got a campaign!”

Pendleton’s staff sent the commercial to South Korea for approval. Five days later, they’d still heard nothing back. At six o’clock on day five, Dale Sohn stood up, put on his jacket, and got ready to go home, before leaving a word of advice on the silence from Seoul.                          

“It means they’ve given you enough rope to hang yourself,” Sohn said.                  

It was up to Todd’s team to make the leap and take the risk. And if it failed, they’d have to answer for it.

They proceeded to leak the film to the popular tech and culture website Mashable, which unveiled it on November 22, 2011, before Samsung posted it “officially” on its Facebook page later that day. Pendleton was abandoning the marketing world’s older, more vanilla strategy of going through print and TV news outlets, opting for the Web first, appealing to millennials. Then, on Thanksgiving weekend, the commercial debuted in minute-long spots during the NFL games.    

Geoffrey Cain's <i>Samsung Rising</i> hits shelves on March 17, 2020.

The campaign was a phenomenal success, beyond anything the team had anticipated; Samsung had hit precisely the sweet spot, with viewers responding that they were tired of swallowing what they thought was Apple’s unjustified pretentiousness. The commercial transformed Samsung Telecommunications America into one of the fastest-growing brands on Facebook, with more than 26 million fans in sixteen months.

“We are the fastest-growing brand globally on Twitter, with almost two million followers,” Pendleton later recounted at a press conference. 

“Get ready to take out your designer pitchforks, Macheads. Your hipness is under attack as we speak,” joked CBS’s Chenda Ngak.

During the third quarter of 2011, Samsung surged past Apple to the number one spot among phone manufacturers, based on shipments. No longer was the smartphone war a battle between Apple and a tangle of obscure Android me-too phones. Now it was a two-horse race. Everyone else had fallen by the wayside.

Trucks carrying fresh apples started arriving at the Texas headquarters of Samsung. Bushel baskets were placed in the elevator banks and break rooms, so that wherever Samsung employees took a coffee break, they were reminded of their mission—to take a bite out of Apple.

Excerpted from Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech © 2020 by Geoffrey Cain. Published by Currency, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Geoffrey Cain is a foreign correspondent and author who has covered Asia and technology for The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Time, The New Republic, and other publications. A resident of South Korea for five years and a Fulbright scholar, he studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and the George Washington University. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Remarkable Recovery: Samsung Crisis Management Case Study

Have you ever wondered how a global tech giant like Samsung managed to navigate a major crisis and bounce back stronger? 

In the world of corporate governance, effective crisis management can be the difference between irreparable damage to a company’s reputation and a successful recovery. 

In this blog post, we delve into a Samsung crisis management case study to learn about exploding batteries to the intricate strategies employed to restore trust.

Samsung’s journey offers valuable insights into the intricacies of crisis management in the digital age. 

Join us as we explore the key lessons learned and best practices from this high-stakes situation, shedding light on the remarkable recovery efforts that propelled Samsung forward.

Let’s learn about sailing through tough times through Samsung crisis management case study

Background of Samsung History and growth of Samsung as a global conglomerate 

Samsung, founded in 1938 by Lee Byung-chul, started as a small trading company in South Korea. Over the years, it steadily expanded into various industries, such as textiles, insurance, and retail.

In the 1960s, Samsung ventured into electronics, marking the beginning of its transformation into a global conglomerate.

With a focus on technological innovation and a commitment to quality, Samsung rapidly gained recognition for its consumer electronics products, including televisions and appliances.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Samsung significantly diversified its business portfolio, entering the semiconductor, telecommunications, and shipbuilding industries.

This diversification strategy helped Samsung become a key player in multiple sectors, solidifying its position as a global leader. Notably, Samsung’s semiconductor division became one of the largest chip manufacturers in the world, supplying components to various electronic devices worldwide.

Samsung’s ascent continued in the 2000s, driven by its successful expansion into the mobile phone market. The introduction of the Galaxy series, powered by the Android operating system, catapulted Samsung to the forefront of the smartphone industry.

The company’s innovative designs, cutting-edge features, and aggressive marketing campaigns contributed to its rise as a major competitor to Apple’s iPhone.

With its global reach, Samsung has consistently ranked among the world’s largest technology companies, epitomizing South Korea’s economic prowess and technological advancements.

Samsung has also been considered one the best companies that successfully managed and implemented change initiatives.

Overview of Samsung’s position in the technology industry

In the consumer electronics segment, Samsung has established itself as a dominant force. Its diverse product lineup encompasses televisions, smartphones, tablets, wearables, home appliances, and audio devices.

The Galaxy series of smartphones, in particular, has enjoyed immense popularity and has emerged as a fierce competitor to other industry giants. Samsung’s televisions are also highly regarded for their cutting-edge display technologies, such as QLED and MicroLED.

The company’s advancements in semiconductor technology have contributed to faster computing speeds, increased storage capacities, and improved energy efficiency.

Samsung’s influence extends beyond consumer electronics and semiconductors. The company is actively involved in telecommunications infrastructure, including the development of 5G networks and the production of network equipment.

Samsung has also made notable strides in the realm of software solutions, including its own mobile operating system, Tizen, and various software platforms for smart devices.

Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Crisis

The Note 7 battery issue marked a significant crisis for Samsung, leading to a widespread recall of the flagship smartphone and causing considerable damage to the company’s reputation.

The crisis began in September 2016 when reports emerged of Note 7 devices catching fire or exploding due to faulty batteries. These incidents raised concerns about consumer safety and triggered a wave of negative publicity for Samsung.

Upon receiving initial reports of battery-related incidents, Samsung initially responded by issuing a voluntary recall of the Note 7 in September 2016. The company acknowledged the problem and expressed its commitment to addressing the issue promptly and effectively.

Samsung attributed the battery malfunctions to a manufacturing defect, specifically a flaw in the design that caused a short circuit.

To ensure customer safety, Samsung advised Note 7 owners to power down their devices and refrain from using them. The company swiftly implemented measures to exchange the affected devices, offering customers the option to either replace their Note 7 with a new unit or receive a refund.

Samsung also collaborated with mobile network operators and retail partners to facilitate the recall process.

In its initial response, Samsung took steps to communicate with customers and the public about the issue. The company published official statements expressing regret for the inconvenience caused and assuring customers of its commitment to resolving the problem. Samsung emphasized its dedication to quality and safety, promising to conduct thorough investigations and implement necessary improvements to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Media coverage and public perception during the crisis

During the Note 7 crisis, media coverage played a significant role in shaping public perception and amplifying the negative impact on Samsung’s brand.

The crisis received extensive coverage from both traditional media outlets and online platforms, leading to widespread awareness and public scrutiny. Here’s an overview of media coverage and its influence on public perception:

• News Outlets: Major news organizations across the globe reported on the Note 7 battery issue, highlighting incidents, the recall, and subsequent developments. Television news segments, newspapers, and online news articles extensively covered the crisis , emphasizing the potential safety risks and consumer concerns. The constant media attention contributed to the widespread dissemination of information and increased public awareness of the issue.
• Online Platforms and Social Media: Social media platforms played a pivotal role in the crisis, enabling the rapid spread of information and user-generated content. Users took to platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to share their experiences, express concerns, and criticize Samsung’s handling of the situation. Viral videos, photos, and personal accounts of Note 7 incidents gained traction, further fueling negative sentiment and influencing public perception.
• Expert Analysis and Opinions: Alongside news coverage, experts and industry analysts provided their insights and opinions on the crisis. Their assessments of Samsung’s response, the potential causes of the battery issue, and the implications for the company’s brand reputation contributed to the overall narrative. Expert opinions had the power to sway public perception and shape the understanding of the crisis.
• Consumer Forums and Discussion Platforms: Online forums and discussion boards dedicated to technology and consumer experiences became hubs for discussions surrounding the Note 7 crisis. Consumers shared their frustrations, exchanged information, and warned others about potential risks. These platforms served as gathering places for individuals affected by the crisis and amplified the negative sentiment surrounding Samsung’s brand.

Financial implications and losses incurred by Samsung

The Note 7 crisis had significant financial implications for Samsung, resulting in substantial losses for the company. Here are some of the key financial impacts experienced by Samsung as a result of the crisis:

• Recall and Replacement Costs: The recall and replacement process incurred significant costs for Samsung. The expenses involved in collecting and replacing over 2 million of Note 7 devices, including logistics, shipping, and refurbishment, were substantial. The costs also encompassed the testing and certification of replacement devices to ensure their safety. The total recall cost was estimated at $5.3 billion.
• Decline in Sales and Market Share: The crisis had a detrimental impact on Samsung’s sales and market share in the smartphone industry. As consumer confidence in the Note 7 and Samsung’s brand reputation declined, potential buyers shifted their preferences to alternative smartphone options. The decline in sales of the Note 7, coupled with the negative impact on the perception of other Samsung products, led to a loss of market share for the company.
• Stock Price Decline: The Note 7 crisis had an immediate impact on Samsung’s stock price. News of the battery issue, recalls, and subsequent negative media coverage led to a decline in Samsung’s stock value. Samsung shares fell approximately to 7 percent right after 2 months of the crisis.

Crisis Management Strategy Employed by Samsung

Following are the key aspects of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 crisis management strategy:

Immediate actions taken by Samsung to address the crisis

In the face of the Note 7 crisis, Samsung swiftly implemented a range of immediate actions to address the situation and mitigate the impact on consumers and the company’s brand reputation. Here are some of the key actions taken by Samsung:

• Voluntary Recall: As soon as reports of battery issues emerged, Samsung initiated a voluntary recall of the Note 7. This proactive step demonstrated the company’s commitment to consumer safety and willingness to take responsibility for the problem.
• Temporary Production Halt: To address the root cause of the battery issue, Samsung temporarily halted production of the Note 7. This decision aimed to prevent further distribution of potentially defective devices and allow for thorough investigations and corrective measures.
• Transparent Communication: Samsung made efforts to communicate openly and transparently about the crisis. The company issued official statements and press releases acknowledging the problem, expressing regret for the inconvenience caused, and reassuring customers of its commitment to resolving the issue. Transparent communication was crucial in maintaining trust and providing timely updates to affected consumers.
• Collaboration with Authorities: Samsung collaborated closely with regulatory authorities and industry experts to investigate the battery issue comprehensively. By engaging external expertise, the company aimed to identify the root cause and develop effective solutions. This collaboration demonstrated Samsung’s commitment to finding the best possible resolution.
• Customer Support and Safety Guidelines: Samsung provided clear instructions to consumers regarding the use of Note 7 devices, emphasizing the importance of safety. The company advised customers to power down their devices, participate in the recall, and utilize alternative devices in the interim. This approach prioritized customer safety and aimed to prevent further incidents.
• Increased Battery Testing and Safety Measures: Samsung implemented enhanced battery testing procedures and stringent safety measures to prevent similar incidents in the future. The company adopted more rigorous quality control processes, including additional safety certifications and testing standards, to ensure the highest levels of product safety.

Communication strategies employed by Samsung

Samsung employed various communication strategies to address the Note 7 crisis and manage the impact on its brand reputation. Effective communication was crucial in maintaining transparency, addressing consumer concerns, and rebuilding trust. Here are some of the communication strategies employed by Samsung:

• Official Statements and Press Releases: Samsung issued official statements and press releases to provide updates on the progress of the recall, investigations, and corrective actions. These statements expressed remorse for the inconvenience caused and reiterated the company’s commitment to customer safety. Clear and concise communication helped keep customers informed and reassured them that Samsung was actively working to resolve the issue.
• Direct Customer Communication: Samsung directly communicated with customers to provide instructions and updates on the recall process. The company utilized various channels such as email, SMS messages, and notifications through its official website and smartphone apps. This direct communication ensured that customers received important information and guidance regarding the recall and replacement program.
• Social Media Engagement: Samsung actively engaged with customers and the public on social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. The company responded to customer queries, addressed concerns, and provided updates on the progress of the recall. By engaging in two-way communication, Samsung demonstrated its willingness to listen, respond, and provide assistance to affected customers.
• Collaboration with Industry Experts: Samsung collaborated with industry experts, battery manufacturers, and regulatory authorities to investigate the root cause of the battery issue. This collaboration was communicated to the public, showcasing Samsung’s commitment to finding solutions and ensuring that the necessary expertise was involved in resolving the crisis.
• Advertisements and Marketing Campaigns: Samsung launched advertising and marketing campaigns focused on rebuilding trust and emphasizing its commitment to quality and safety. These campaigns highlighted Samsung’s dedication to addressing the issue and regaining consumer confidence. Advertisements often emphasized the company’s rigorous testing procedures and quality control measures to assure customers of the safety of its products.
• CEO Apology: Samsung’s CEO issued a public apology, taking personal responsibility for the crisis and expressing regret for the inconvenience and concern caused to customers. The CEO’s apology aimed to convey sincerity, empathy, and a commitment to rectifying the situation, while also reinforcing the company’s accountability and determination to regain trust. The apology was published on a full page in 03 major US newspapers – the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times.

Collaborations with regulatory authorities and industry experts

Samsung worked closely with government agencies and regulatory bodies in various countries where incidents related to the Note 7 were reported. The company shared information, conducted investigations, and cooperated with authorities to ensure compliance with safety regulations and guidelines. Collaboration with government agencies helped align efforts to address the crisis and establish industry-wide safety standards.

In the United States, Samsung collaborated with the CPSC, an independent federal agency responsible for ensuring the safety of consumer products. Samsung worked together with the CPSC to investigate the battery issue and coordinate the recall process. This collaboration ensured that the recall efforts followed established safety protocols and provided consumers with accurate information.

Samsung collaborated with battery manufacturers to investigate the specific manufacturing defects that caused the battery issue. The company worked closely with these partners to analyze the battery designs, manufacturing processes, and quality control measures. By involving battery manufacturers in the investigation, Samsung aimed to identify the root cause and implement corrective actions to prevent similar issues in the future.

Samsung engaged independent testing labs to conduct thorough assessments of the Note 7 batteries and verify the effectiveness of corrective measures. These labs specialized in battery testing and certification, providing expertise and unbiased evaluation of the battery performance and safety. Collaboration with independent testing labs helped validate Samsung’s efforts to address the battery issue and instill confidence in the effectiveness of the solutions.

Post-Crisis Recovery and Rebuilding 

Samsung implemented more stringent quality control measures across its product development and manufacturing processes. This included enhanced battery testing protocols, increased inspections, and stricter quality assurance standards. By demonstrating a commitment to producing reliable and safe products, Samsung aimed to rebuild customer trust.

Extended Warranty and Customer Support: Samsung extended warranty periods for existing and new devices, including the Note 7, to provide customers with added assurance. The company also enhanced its customer support services, ensuring that customers could easily access assistance, product information, and technical support. These initiatives aimed to demonstrate Samsung’s commitment to customer satisfaction and support.

  Launch of subsequent product lines and their impact on brand perception

Following the Note 7 crisis, Samsung launched subsequent product lines, including flagship smartphones like the Galaxy S8 and subsequent iterations. These launches played a crucial role in shaping brand perception and rebuilding trust. Key factors that influenced brand perception and the recovery process include:

• Emphasis on Safety and Quality: Samsung placed a strong emphasis on safety and quality in its subsequent product launches. The company implemented rigorous testing procedures and introduced new safety features to ensure the reliability and safety of its devices. By highlighting these improvements, Samsung aimed to regain customer trust and reassure them of its commitment to producing high-quality products.
• Positive User Experience: Samsung focused on delivering positive user experiences with its new product lines. This included improvements in design, performance, and functionality to enhance customer satisfaction. By providing users with exceptional products, Samsung aimed to rebuild its reputation and generate positive word-of-mouth, contributing to brand recovery.
• Brand Messaging and Marketing: Samsung’s marketing efforts during subsequent product launches were carefully crafted to reinforce positive brand associations and regain customer trust. The company emphasized innovation, customer-centricity, and the commitment to quality and safety. Marketing campaigns highlighted features, benefits, and technological advancements to create a positive brand image and overcome the negative perceptions associated with the Note 7 crisis.

Final Words 

Samsung’s handling of the Note 7 crisis serves as a case study in crisis management. Despite the significant financial and reputational setbacks, the company took proactive steps to address the crisis, regain customer trust, and prevent similar incidents in the future.

The Samsung crisis management case study highlights the importance of swift and transparent communication, customer-centric actions, and continuous improvement in product safety and quality. By effectively addressing the crisis, Samsung was able to navigate the challenging situation and rebuild its brand, reaffirming its position as a leading global technology company.

Overall, the Samsung crisis management case study provides valuable insights into how a company can recover from a major setback, restore customer trust, and strengthen its position in the market through strategic actions and a relentless commitment to customer satisfaction and product excellence.

About The Author

Tahir Abbas

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Samsung’s Generic Competitive Strategy & Growth Strategies

Samsung’s generic competitive strategy and intensive growth strategies set business goals for technological innovation as a critical factor in developing competitive advantages. Headquartered in Korea, the conglomerate competes with technology-intensive firms, such as Apple , Google (Alphabet) , Microsoft , Sony , and Intel , which create strong competitive forces, as determined through a Five Forces analysis of Samsung. The industry environment imposes aggressive competitive behavior that typically involves rapid technological innovation for product differentiation, as seen in the evolution of smartphones available in the global market. To effectively compete, Samsung’s generic competitive strategy and growth strategies must involve investment in technological innovation. The resulting competitive advantages enable the company to keep its competitive position as one of the best performers in the semiconductors, consumer electronics, and home appliances industries. Samsung’s generic competitive strategy and intensive strategies for growth are suited to the current business environment and the strategic positioning of the multinational organization’s operations.

The generic competitive strategy and intensive growth strategies of Samsung Group permeate its entire organization, influencing the strategic choices and implementations of its divisions and subsidiaries. The Group’s unitary leadership is responsible for the corporate strategic direction and competitive advantages of the conglomerate and its technology-focused subsidiaries. Samsung’s generic competitive strategy and intensive growth strategies are observable in product design, marketing strategies, and the business organizational development direction of subsidiaries.

Samsung’s Generic Competitive Strategy (Porter Model)

Samsung applies broad differentiation as its generic competitive strategy. Based on Michael E. Porter’s competitive strategy model, the strategic objective of broad differentiation is to maintain competitive advantage by providing unique (or differentiated) products targeting a wide market, which in this case is industry-wide, involving practically every person or group that buys smartphones, laptops, and other equipment. To achieve Samsung’s strategic plans for growth and expansion in the global market, this generic competitive strategy requires the application of product development as a main intensive growth strategy to compete with other technology firms.

Samsung’s investments in product development are a strategic implication of differentiation as its generic competitive strategy. For example, the company invests in technological innovation to support the competitive advantage of its products in the consumer electronics market. Another implication of this generic competitive strategy is Samsung’s marketing mix (4Ps) and related strategies that promote products as unique or different alternatives to the majority of competitors. This marketing approach and technological innovation sustain the corporation’s competitive advantages and value chain effectiveness in satisfying customers’ needs in consumer electronics, computing technology, and home appliances.

Other generic competitive strategies, such as cost leadership, differentiation focus, and cost focus, are also applied in Samsung’s operations, but to a limited extent. Cost focus leads to the company’s being the best-cost provider in some segments of the semiconductor and electronic components markets. The limited application of cost focus still comes with innovation standards that reflect Samsung’s main generic competitive strategy of broad differentiation. These generic strategies align with the company’s intensive growth strategies to succeed in sustaining the technology firm’s competitive advantages.

Samsung’s Intensive Growth Strategies (Ansoff Matrix)

Market Penetration (Primary) . Samsung’s revenue growth depends on market penetration as the primary intensive strategy. In Igor Ansoff’s matrix, the strategic objective of market penetration is to grow the technology business by increasing its revenues from the sale of current products in current markets, such as the European Union’s consumer electronics market, where the corporation already has operations. Competitive advantages and business strengths identified in the SWOT analysis of Samsung combat negative forces from competition in these markets. As an intensive growth strategy, market penetration depends on the effectiveness of the generic competitive strategy of broad differentiation, in terms of how the company creates technologically innovative products that are differentiated enough to attract target customers in current or existing markets.

Product Development (Secondary) . Considering the emphasis of product superiority in Samsung’s corporate mission and vision statements , product development is a major intensive growth strategy of the enterprise. A strategic objective of product development in this case is to grow the business through new products, such as new electronic gadgets. Also, this intensive strategy grows Samsung’s operations through iterative innovation, which leads to improved versions or variants of existing products. For example, the company regularly rolls out new smartphone models, similar to what competitors are doing in their product development strategy. The implementation of product development as an intensive growth strategy is based on Samsung’s generic competitive strategy of differentiation, which requires product development for uniqueness that differentiates the business from the competition. Economies of scope based on the conglomerate’s various subsidiaries support product development and competitive advantage by providing technological expertise and material inputs from the subsidiaries. Samsung’s organizational culture (work culture) affects human-resource support for operational effectiveness, value chain efficiencies, supply chain management, and other business activities that fulfill the strategic objectives of product development.

Market Development . The global scale of Samsung’s operations makes market development a minor intensive strategy for business growth. Market development’s strategic objective is to enter new markets using the company’s existing products, such as introducing new Galaxy tablets in Latin American markets after these products’ introduction in the United States. As an intensive growth strategy, market development’s success depends on product value and competitive advantage, which in this case comes with Samsung’s generic strategy of differentiation via technological innovation. For example, effective innovation for cutting-edge technological design makes the corporation’s products more competitive when rolled out in target markets. With this intensive growth strategy, introducing products to new markets may come with changes in the geographical units of Samsung’s organizational structure (company structure) .

Diversification . Samsung’s diversified business operations maintain multiple revenue channels and spread risk across industries and markets. This intensive growth strategy’s implementation is infrequent in the technology conglomerate, considering regulatory hurdles and other barriers. With the strategic objective of establishing new profitable businesses, the diversification strategy grows Samsung typically through acquisitions of smaller firms, such as Harman International Industries. The minor role designation of this intensive growth strategy limits the risks of establishing new business operations. In implementing diversification, the generic competitive strategy of differentiation is also applied for competitiveness and strategic alignment among Samsung subsidiaries’ business operations.

Some Considerations – Samsung’s Generic Competitive Strategy & Intensive Growth Strategies

Samsung’s generic competitive strategy and intensive growth strategies direct the organization’s growth and development. Differentiation plays a major role in building the company’s competitive advantage, although other generic competitive strategies, such as cost leadership and focus strategies, also support the technology enterprise and its competitiveness. Samsung’s operations management strategies and administration must align with the differentiation generic competitive strategy and the intensive growth strategies to support business growth while competing with aggressive multinational companies.

• López, D., & Oliver, M. (2023). Integrating innovation into business strategy: Perspectives from innovation managers. Sustainability, 15 (8), 6503.
• Samsung – Brand Identity .
• Samsung R&D Center .
• Samsung Catalyst Fund .
• Taherdoost, H. (2023). An overview of trends in information systems: Emerging technologies that transform the information technology industry. Cloud Computing and Data Science , 1-16.
• U.S. Department of Commerce – International Trade Administration – Software and Information Technology Industry .
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Influencer Event Marketing

6 Niche Influencers

Case Study: Samsung Influencer Campaign at CES

No matter how big the brand or budget, standing out during CES is tough. And Samsung found themselves in that similar conundrum.

That’s why for CES 2020 Samsung tasked us with helping navigate through this challenge of reaching a wider audience. As a solution, we enlisted six micro-influencers in photography, gaming, tech, movie reviews and music production to authentically cover the Samsung CES experience for their respective communities.

According to BuzzRadar CES 2020 has generated around 800k mentions across social media, making it one of the most often mentioned tech events in the world. In order to cut through the media noise and stand out from the competition, brands need to plan ahead for their digital exposure at the event.

Project goals

Help unveiled Samsung products and reach a wider audience

Showcase how Samsung’s CES products serve multiple purposes and hobbies

About the Products

Products included: Micro LED, QLED 8K, the Sero, and the Frame

Campaign Strategy

Cloutboost team invited several Influencers from a variety of relevant niches to attend Samsung’s keynote and booth at CES 2020. Through their own enjoyable and immersive experience, Influencers shared their excitement about new products with their online communities.

1. We selected 6 Thought Leaders who:

• Evoked strong, likeable personalities
• Could produce high-quality content
• Built a highly engaged community
• Genuinely championed the Samsung brand
• Represented niche’s adjacent to the showcased products. 
Including: Photography, Movie reviews, Games, Tech, and Music production.

2. In collaboration with Influencers, we developed communication strategy for each Influencer to present Samsung products in relation to their respective sphere of influence

• Which products to cover based on influencer’s niche, allowing them to provide a creative spin on how these products would enhance their profession/hobbies
• Platforms to use and frequency of posts 18 Tweets 18 Instagram Stories 1 YouTube product demo These included a welcome post, daily event updates, and wrap-up posts
• Brand/Product, Event-Specific, and Conversation-Driving hashtag protocols, such as: #QLED8K     #SamsungTV     #CESUnveiled     #8K
• We optimized each influencer’s event coverage time by inviting them to attend media day, scheduling time to interview Samsung representatives and managing all travel arrangements

Creator Content

Influencer generated unique and highly creative content covering a variety of themes from displaying high-quality photos on a wall to experiencing movie-theater quality to throwing a karaoke party.

Each Influencer produced a dedicated video review covering their experience at CES 2020 and featuring Samsung products in great detail.

Each Influencer shared frequent social posts to showcase their experiences with the products. They also used the branded hashtags to create awareness for the brand

No need to upgrade your internet for 8K streaming. Deep learning viewing does it without effecting image quality! @SamsungTV #samsung #CES2020 pic.twitter.com/dZorS9r9LD — John Flickinger (@theFLICKpick) January 7, 2020

L.Dre the Giant vs #THEWALL @SamsungTV #CES2020 #samsung pic.twitter.com/XBqorUCC9R — LDre.eth (@ldrethegiant) January 6, 2020

Influencers

Achievements.

Over 100 Instagram stories garnering an audience of 685K

6 dedicated YouTube videos published on Influencers’ channels and Samsung Official YT Channel

93 Tweets fetching over 4.5K Likes

Creators generated high-quality visual & video content that has been later repurposed by Samsung for marketing campaigns (under the licensing agreements secured by Cloutboost).

Due to the combined efforts of its international team, Samsung became the most mentioned brand of CES 2020.

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• Published: 21 October 2019

Planting and harvesting innovation - an analysis of Samsung Electronics

• Seung Hoon Jang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7984-7383 1 ,
• Sang M. Lee 2 ,
• Taewan Kim 3 &
• Donghyun Choi 4  

International Journal of Quality Innovation volume  5 , Article number:  7 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

1 Citations

2 Altmetric

Metrics details

This study explores how firms manage the entire life cycle of innovation projects based on the framework of harvesting and planting innovation. While harvesting innovation seeks new products in the expectation of financial performance in the short term, planting innovation pursues creating value over a long time period. Without proper management of the process of planting and harvesting innovation, firms with limited resources may not be successful in launching innovative new products to seize a momentum in high tech industries. To examine this issue, the case of Samsung Electronics (SE), now an electronics giant originated from a former developing country, is analyzed. SE has shown to effectively utilize co-innovation to maintain numerous planting and harvesting innovation projects. Both researchers and practitioners would be interested in learning about how SE shared risks of innovation investment with external partners at the early stage of innovation cycles.

Introduction

Globalization and advances in technologies have made the global market extremely dynamic and competitive. While companies like Apple have created new customer value by introducing such products as iMac computer and iPhone, many other firms have failed to adapt to the fast-changing environment. Kodak, the creator of the film camera, became history since it failed to adapt to the digital era in a timely fashion. To compete successfully in the dynamic global market, organizations must continuously innovate ways to create value [ 1 ]. Thus, innovation has been an important topic to both management researchers and practitioners [ 2 ]. Many studies have explored the relationship between innovative activities and organizational performance [ 3 , 4 ]. The firm’s ability of managing innovative projects has been considered as a key dynamic capability, resulting in new product development [ 5 ]. Innovative activities of the firm have generally shown to positively impact organizational outcome.

Although a number of studies in this research stream have introduced various types of innovation based on learning styles [ 6 , 7 ] or objects [ 3 ], few have paid attention to the timing of financial return from innovation. Given the importance of financial payoff from innovation for firm survival and sustained competitive advantage, research on how a real business should manage both innovation and cash flow is critical. Thus, in this study, we intend to answer the following two research questions.

RQ1: Which classification of innovation can best explain the heterogeneous timing of financial payoff realization?

To answer this question, we applied a classification scheme of planting and harvesting innovation [ 8 , 9 ]. Planting innovation involves pursuing potential sources of competitive advantage, including original technology, which may create value in a long term perspective. In contrast, harvesting innovation aims to develop new ways to monetize planted innovation, including new products for market launching, in the expectation of commercial success in a relatively short term. The aim of this research stream is to determine how to implement planting and harvesting innovation and measure the results of ensuing innovative activities. From this perspective, this study examines how a real global firm manages both types of innovation.

RQ2: How are planting and harvesting activities of innovation actually implemented in a successful global business firm?

To answer this question, we focus on Samsung Electronics (SE) which has become the world’s largest electronics firm through successful planting and harvesting of innovation. While SE has developed many innovative new commercial products, it has focused on fundamental breakthrough technologies as the source of future growth momentum. This case may provide valuable implications for firms from developing economies. To compete in high tech industries, these businesses need to invest a large amount of capital to risky innovation projects. Otherwise, they may remain low value added entities, like assemblers or fast followers. The case of SE, like many other success stories, exhibits a possibility that multinationals originated from developing countries can become leading global firms based on their efforts and vision for breakthrough innovations.

Given the current turbulent global business environment, as observed by trade disputes between the USA and China and the recently disrupted supply of critical input resources from Japan to Korea, it is imperative for firms to develop core competences based on innovation. In the digital age, businesses must rely on innovation to enhance their dynamic capabilities [ 10 ] to enhance agility, flexibility, and resilience for value creation [ 1 ]. Thus, this study which focuses on the effective management of planting and harvesting innovation is expected to make important contributions to the literature.

This study examines how firms can implement innovation projects for both short- and long-term perspectives. For this purpose, we first reviewed the literature for major research streams of innovation. Then, a case method is used to examine how planting and harvesting of innovation have helped SE became a dominant global electronics firm, around 2012. In addition to secondary data, executive interviews reported in media also describe how SE employees implemented planting and harvesting innovation. The results of qualitative analyses are presented and articulated. Finally, the implications and limitations of this research are presented. The framework of planting and harvesting innovation provides a theoretical background on how firms can strive for both short-term cash flow and a long-term momentum despite their limited resources. Furthermore, the study results provide insights to practitioners through the case study of SE which struggled initially to save the cost of innovation by collaborating with external partners for planting and harvesting innovation.

Innovation under resource constraints

Planting versus harvesting innovation.

Researchers in various fields, including economics, sociology, and technology management, have been interested in innovation [ 11 ]. The characteristics of innovative outcomes have been investigated as a major research agenda [ 12 , 13 ]. As Damanpour and colleagues [ 14 ] suggested, the introduction of novel ideas or technologies is the core of innovation. According to Van de Ven [ 15 ], innovation can be described as “the development and implementation of new ideas by people who over time engage in transactions with others within an institutional order ([ 15 ], p590).” Several definitions of innovation have focused on how to apply creativity to business operations and processes [ 15 , 16 ]. These studies imply that the main focus of innovation research has been on whether the firm creates new tangible or intangible values.

However, innovation has shown to lead to varied results. The meta-analysis by Rosenbusch et al. [ 17 ] reported that different contexts explain heterogeneous outcomes resulting from innovation. Even if firms implement similar innovation projects, the result can be different due to environmental factors. In addition, innovation sometimes improves the value of marketing skills rather than creating new technical capabilities [ 18 , 19 ]. What these results imply is that characteristics of innovative activities are complex. Since a single concept cannot explain the nature and outcome of innovation, researchers need to consider diverse classifications to explain the phenomena of innovation. Given the importance of cash flow in business, a greater focus is required on the influence of innovation on the survival and prosperity of the firm. Even when firms obtain breakthrough technologies, they may not survive when they fail to create new products/services and resulting cash flow as discussed by Jang [ 8 ] and Jang and Grandzol [ 9 ]. Furthermore, the large amount of investment needed for innovative activities requires firms to prioritize and manage their projects based on the commercial potential. Thus, there is a need to search for a new framework that can provide better explanations on innovation with respect to this issue. The most existing classifications of innovation are not based on the timing of financial outcomes of innovative activities.

One of the typologies regarding this topic is the categorization of radical and incremental innovation based on the sharpness of change in innovative practices [ 20 ]. A more drastic transformation can be expected from radical innovation projects while a relatively slight newness can be added to existing technologies during the incremental innovation process. Since radical innovation can pursue both drastic breakthrough and immediate commercialization, there exists the disparity between the distinction of radical and incremental innovation, the main focus of this paper. Space shuttle can be considered as an example of radical innovation as the realization of reusable spacecraft but it is generally considered as a product for immediate use rather than a long-term growth momentum. Such discrepancy leads researchers to develop a new categorization of innovation based on the expected timing of financial outcome.

The Code-Division Multiple Access (CDMA) wireless technology is an interesting case for this point. The CDMA technology was developed by Qualcomm ( www.qualcomm.com ), but the commercial CDMA phones were first created and produced by Korean manufacturers, including SE and LG. While Qualcomm was interested in developing CDMA as planting innovation, SE and LG focused on commercializing the technology for harvesting that innovation. Qualcomm could benefit from licensing fees in the long term with the success of commercial products based on CDMA. In contrast, the short-term cash flow was derived by SE and LG as they sold more CDMA phones to individual consumers.

From this perspective, innovation can be categorized based on its relatedness to the firm’s performance in the short or long term [ 8 , 9 ]. While certain types of innovative activities may result in an increase of the firm resources engaged in the current competition, others can create value that has long-term potential. This approach modifies the definition of innovations by Gumusluoglu and Ilsev [ 21 ] as described in Jang [ 8 ] and Jang and Grandzol [ 9 ]. First, harvesting innovation can be described as the development of a new resource that can help launch new products/services in the short term. New products, such as Toyota Prius, would be a good example of this type of innovation. Planting innovation refers to the creation of potential firm resources that are based on the state-of-the-art innovation in the expectation of long-term financial benefits. For instance, the invention of hybrid engine technology “plants” potential for future value while the creation of a hybrid car like Prius “harvests” the results of the planting of that innovation.

There are several reasons why planting innovation may not result in new commercial products/services in the short term. First, there may be social constraints that would not allow the use of innovative technology, resulting in no market for new products/services. The commercial use of human stem cell research in the USA has been prohibited by the Food and Drug Administration [ 22 ]. Firms initiating planting innovation in this area cannot expect commercial success due to this regulation, except perhaps in other countries. Second, firms may need to wait for the advent of other complementing technologies for the commercialization process. Thus, firms face a high degree of uncertainty about the financial outcome of planting innovation in the long term, especially in the biotech industry. The development of a new technology usually has a high probability of failure. Therefore, planting innovation may not lead to financial gains in the short term even if firms succeed in developing a technology.

The characteristic of planting innovation makes it distinct from invention. Innovation requires entrepreneurial utilization of technological newness by definition, while invention includes scientific and/or technological breakthrough for discovery purposes [ 23 ]. Firms invest in planting innovation projects in the expectation of long-term profits. Although the result of planting innovation may directly create cash flows in the form of patent fee, firms usually wait until finding out how to apply the result of planting innovation. In contrast, harvesting innovation pursues short-term profits by launching new products or services. In the 1970s, the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) at Xerox initiated the development of innovative technologies such as Ethernet (or LAN technology) and copper wire-based Ethernet communication [ 24 ]. Due to the lack of commercial intention of Xerox both short and long term, these developments can be classified as examples of invention rather than planting innovation.

Given the heterogeneous characteristics of planting and harvesting innovation, ambidexterity can be important in balancing such innovative activities. Studies on exploitative and explorative innovations have examined this issue [ 6 , 7 , 25 ]. Since pioneering efforts for new processes or technology involve much risk, firms need to optimize the return of their investment in both types of innovation. One possible approach is to utilize external capabilities through M&A, alliances, or industry-academia collaborations through open innovation. Such arrangements would allow firms to share the risk of innovation with other participants [ 1 ].

In addition, convergence has played a major role in explaining value added activities in modern firms [ 1 , 26 ]. Globalization has encouraged the convergence revolution which allows value creation from the synergy of diverse disciplines, industries including IT, biotechnology, and nanotechnology [ 26 ]. The co-innovation platform helps converge diverse types of innovations for value creation [ 1 ]. Multinationals participating in co-innovation are expected to collaborate with stakeholders, including suppliers, customers, partners, and outsiders. Therefore, outside stakeholders can be active partners who co-create shared goals.

Overall, the classification of innovation can contribute to research by providing clearer guidelines related to the timing of financial outcome of innovation. While planting innovation can result in potential resources for long-term value creation, harvesting innovation is intended to generate continuous cash flows to those engaged in the current market. Following the case of exploitative and explorative innovation, researchers in this field should also consider ambidexterity of the organization. By doing so, firms under resource constraints can be prepared for an optimal portfolio of innovation projects, resulting in better organizational performance in the long term.

• Case analysis

In this study, the case of Samsung Electronics (SE), now the largest electronic firm in the world from a former emerging economy, is examined to unveil the processes of harvesting and planting innovation and their results. Innovative activities have been the core strength of SE and are expected to continue creating value for SE. The Mission 2020 of Samsung ( http://www.samsung.com ) states that it will “inspire the world, create the world” through creative and innovative solutions. This implies that the firm intends to pursue innovation over time beyond the development of commercial products for short-term returns.

Several qualitative techniques are employed to investigate the SE case. First, we collected articles including executive interviews from 2000 to 2012. The articles were manually coded into planting and harvesting innovation frameworks after a careful review of contents. News reports were analyzed via local portal sites, including Lexis-Nexis ( http://www.lexisnexis.com ) and Naver ( www.naver.com ). Particularly, we searched Naver, the major Korean portal website, to collect news articles concerning SE research topics from 2002 to 2012. We chose this period, 2002 and 2012, to collect data for this study as this is when SE made the significant transformation to become a dominant global IT leader. The search keywords used were “Samsung Electronics” and “Innovation.” The search using the keywords assured the study to verify that all related articles are captured. After removing duplicates, we investigated the contents of 183 related news articles. Based on the analysis, all the key interviews of executives and managers at SE were collected and examined. In addition, the other secondary data sources like the websites of companies, universities, and local governments were examined.

Samsung Electronics

SE has been a major global player in electronics and related industries for over three decades. Hoovers ( www.hoovers.com ), a leading corporate information provider on large businesses, describes the overall state of this firm as the new “Electronics Samson.” In year 2015, it reported $171 billion revenue and $16 billion net profit. Its major products include digital electronics, semiconductors, and DVD players. Financial Times ranked Samsung Electronics as 19th in their 2015 FT Global 500 ( www.ft.com/ft500 ). It is beyond doubt that this firm has been successful in creating value for its customers.

The webpage of Samsung Electronics ( www.samsung.com ) and Samsung C&T ( www.samsungcnt.co.kr ) describes the history of Samsung Group and Electronics as follows. Samsung group was founded in 1938 as a small retail firm in Daegu, Korea. The founding chairman, Lee Byung-Chull, established Samsung-Sanyo Electronics to diversify the business in 1969. As the name implies, the firm collaborated with Japan’s electronics giant Sanyo. It began production of black-and-white TV sets for the first time in 1970, as an outsource manufacturer. After changing its name to Samsung Electronics, the firm began to produce color TV sets, video recorders, microwaves, and personal computers. It has rapidly developed as a global firm since it entered the semiconductor industry in the early 1980s. Since South Korea has recently been accepted as a developed economy [ 27 ], it can be said that SE began as an emerging market firm.

Given the fact that SE was founded only about five decades ago, the current performance and growth are astonishing. Despite the current status, the firm used to be considered as a fast follower [ 28 ]. SE had focused on producing existing products with better quality at lower prices than other global firms. It is an interesting research topic to examine how and why SE has evolved into a global giant in the electronics industry.

To provide an explanation on this issue, we investigated how SE has implemented innovation to achieve strategic objectives. In 2001, President of Booz Allen and Hamilton Korea stated that Korean firms need to pursue breakthrough innovations to adapt to new market environments [ 29 ]. In other words, SE as well as other major Korean manufacturers began to pursue innovation rather than continue to follow market leaders to survive in the dynamic global marketplace.

Harvesting innovation at Samsung Electronics

SE has engaged in various innovation activities to gain global competitive advantage. By doing so, the firm has been able to create value and benefit from new markets with expectations of stable cash inflows. For instance, SE developed new products like Rambus DRAM and Nand flash memory rather than increasing the accumulation rate of semiconductors [ 28 ]. Since these new products reflect the needs of customers, including PC or smartphone manufacturers, the innovation brought a large amount of profit in the short term. Given the astonishing results that SE has accomplished, its process of harvesting innovation has drawn much attention.

SE has continued implementing innovative activities steadily. The Value Innovation Program (VIP) Centre, setup in 1998, has played a key role in developing innovative new products at SE [ 28 , 30 , 31 ]. This Centre has shown to nurture creativity and broaden the ideas of R&D staff. As the chief researcher at SE stated, the introduction of value innovation methods has contributed to the creation of many new ideas [ 28 ]. Through this system, all participants were expected to overcome the trap of past success syndrome, leading to what is possible.

Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS) [ 32 ] has been the backbone of the harvesting innovation process at SE [ 30 ]. SE invited W. Kim, the main author of BOS, to train its executives. Senior executives have encouraged the dissemination of value innovation at SE based on the BOS approach [ 33 ]. SE strives to create value which its customers never even expected through value innovation for new products. SE’s value innovation includes value management and value creation [ 33 ]. While the former focuses on cost reduction and efficiency improvement, the latter aims to generate added value. Therefore, the firm searches for creative ideas rather than implementing traditional continuous improvement type programs.

SE has found practical tools to implement harvesting innovation based on BOS [ 31 ]. First, the VIP Centre has utilized the strategy canvas, a framework of implementing BOS [ 32 , 34 ]. In the Centre, managerial decisions on important projects have been made based on the value curve of each unit against competitors, resulting in new products like 40-inch LCD TV. In addition, the “7 Tools Method” practiced in Japan, which enables firms to empirically recognize value factors of their customers, was introduced [ 35 ]. For instance, a survey of 226 Japanese employees triggered the production of a laptop that works well even in a bad wireless environment. These types of techniques have helped SE create new products successfully by reflecting innate needs and requirements of individual and business customers.

It has been reported that all of the creative ideas from the VIP Centre have been reflected in the design and development of new products of SE [ 36 ]. As a result, innovativeness of the firm’s new products has been globally recognized as the numerous Innovation Awards of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) attest (see Table 1 ). These achievements prove that the innovative results of SE have been widely recognized by professionals in the field as well as ordinary customers. SE has succeeded in developing new products through harvesting innovation activities.

Planting innovation at Samsung Electronics

SE has also focused on the creation of innovative ideas which may not realize any meaningful revenue in the short term. The major results of planting innovation are original technologies which can result in competitive advantage and lead to future business success. The CEO of SE stressed the importance of “technology preparation management,” pursuing core technologies in order to respond to the convergence across technologies and products [ 37 ]. This statement exhibits the strong will of top management of SE to implement the planting innovation strategy.

The Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) has played a critical role in developing original technologies. The website ( www.site.samsung.com ) describes the research efforts currently in place. The Future IT and Convergence domain seeks technologies across real 3D processing, communication theory and network, multicore processing, data intelligence, and medical imaging. The New Materials and Nanotechnology domain aims at developing flexible electronics, solid state lighting, film ceramic crystal composite materials, micro-system integration, oxide materials and devices, spintronics, and nanostructure and materials research. The Energy and Environment domain focuses on energy storage, energy conversion, and environment fields. The Bio and Health domain explores gene analysis and point of care testing (POCT). Indeed, SE has encouraged researchers to create a broad range of intellectual capital for the purpose of leading future technologies.

Furthermore, it seems likely that SE seeks Chesbrough’s [ 2 , 38 ] open innovation to improve efficiency and effectiveness of planting innovation. By doing so, the firm can create innovative results with less burden in time and resources. The CEO mentioned that open innovation needs to be encouraged to shorten the technology life cycle and to enable convergence in the electronics industry [ 37 ]. Thus, SE senior managers have aggressively focused on the utilization of external ideas and capabilities [ 39 ].

M&A has been a major instrument to acquire external intellectual capital. SE has acquired several firms, including SanDisk, Amica (a Polish electronics firm) in 2009, and Transchip (a non-memory semiconductor manufacturer in Israel) in 2008 [ 40 ]. SE informed the board of directors of SanDisk about its intention of collaborative innovation orientation and human resource retention in SanDisk [ 41 ]. Such M&A activities have enabled SE to obtain proven and complimentary intellectual capital and dynamic capabilities, including R&D employees.

SE has also managed a broader range of intellectual capital without much investment by sharing their proprietary technologies with partners. For example, SE and IBM, two top US patent firms, established a cross-licensing agreement which allows the participants to utilize each other’s patents for innovation in 2011 [ 42 ]. These firms can share their patents without additional investment, resulting in a more stable basis for innovative activities. This type of contract enables SE to implement planting innovation with finite capabilities. Executives of SE and IBM also announced that the objective of cross-licensing lies in sharing intellectual capital in the expectation of continuous innovative outputs. In sum, SE has implemented planting innovation through SAIT internally and has utilized external capabilities through M&A and licensing for significant financial gains in the long run. SAIT has implemented several major research projects independently as well.

Ambidexterity and co-innovation

Since SE is implementing planting and harvesting innovation simultaneously, one major task is balancing both types of innovative activities. Otherwise, the firm may suffer from lack of financial cash flows or future leadership in the industry. Despite their brand image, major manufacturers of wristwatch had to overcome the loss of sales volume in the 1970s due to the revolutionary quarts movement technology [ 43 ]. Although US electronic giants initiated the transistor technology, Japanese manufacturers like Sony harvested the lion’s share of its benefits with their transistor radios [ 44 ].

The significance of inter-organizational cooperation in attaining competitive advantage cannot be ignored [ 45 ]. Thus, any organization, however large or global it may be, cannot be competitive for long without collaboration with other world-class partners. From this perspective, the success or failure of firms today lies in managing the relationships with other value chain partners and stakeholders [ 4 ].

Beyond the conventional exploration and open innovation focusing on the use of external resources, SE has been searching for the best way to simultaneously implement planting and harvesting innovation through co-innovation with stakeholders [ 1 ] (see Fig. 1 ). The main focus of the VIP Centre has been on how to encourage collaboration among internal departments. Resulting convergence across departments has enabled the firm to recognize the diverse viewpoints other than the opinions of core engineers. The VIP Centre director stated that those firms interested in value innovation need to adopt the cross-functional team (CFC) concept with a separate space to promote inter-departmental collaboration for value innovation [ 34 ]. This process is expected to encourage formal and informal sharing of ideas, opinions, and viewpoints since participants have more opportunities to communicate with many people. For instance, the CFC team consisting of marketers, designers, and engineers developed a new slim style laptop which caught the fancy of Japanese consumers [ 35 ]. Furthermore, the members of the Centre frequently collaborate with external partners [ 35 ].

Co-innovation at Samsung Electronics. Based on the information from SAIT ( www.SAIT.samsung.com ) and Kim’s [ 35 ] study

SAIT has played a significant role in connecting SE with external entities ( http://www.sait.samsung.co.kr ), such as universities, through the Global Research Outreach (GRO) program and other collaborators via the Collaborative Open Research Expert (CORE) program. These efforts have allowed the firm to share the risks inherent in planting innovation. Thus, the firm has been able to reduce the uncertainty involved in innovative practices and maximize its value with finite organizational resources.

Another example of collaboration lies in its value-chain management beyond the use of external capabilities. An association of Samsung’s collaborating vendors, Hyup-Sung-Hoe, has played a key role in co-innovation processes [ 46 ]. SE and collaborating vendors have participated in innovation activities, including sectional committee meetings. It is evident that SE’s innovation activities cover not only its own value chain but also that of its partners. Given the fact that current business activities must include vendors, the improvement of innovation capabilities of the entire value chain is essential for gaining competitive advantage. SE also considers the creation of new ventures with excellent technologies as another outcome of its open innovation strategy [ 47 ]. The firm manages its entire value chain to compete successfully, as opposed to conducting business with partners for short-term monetary rewards. Figure 1 presents SE’s value chain convergence activities.

SE has participated in the various industry-academia collaboration projects. This partnership has enabled SE to interact with partners to utilize their tangible and intangible resources. Particularly, research universities can provide professional human resources, research expertise, and infrastructure. In 2012, SE established the Centre for Intelligent Computing (CIC) with Seoul National University [ 48 ]. While the former supports the facilities and programs, the latter provides research ideas and its faculty resource. Such projects allow SE to benefit from the results of collaborative innovation while sharing the burden of investment. Furthermore, individual participants would likely to share ideas and opinions due to their “relationships” even after the official project is completed, beyond organizational boundaries. SE has also established the Samsung Talent Program (STP) with 14 Korean universities [ 48 ]. This program is intended to nurture and develop R&D employees to fit its needs.

The use of a co-innovation mechanism has played a key role in managing planting and harvesting innovation with limited organizational resources. SE has established networks with the various innovation partners, including diverse internal departments, academia, technicians, customers, and suppliers to collaborate and co-create for shared goals. In addition to external resources, the closely interconnected relationships among participants are expected to nurture collective intelligence. Overall, co-innovation allows SE to manage both types of innovation, harvesting and planting, while coping with its fast expanding global presence.

Firm performance

The innovation investment of Samsung Electronics has shown tremendous financial return as can be seen in Fig. 2 . The financial information from Daum ( www.daum.net ), a major portal site in Korea, exhibits that SE’s sales volume has dramatically increased since the early 2000s. As SE has paid more attention to harvesting innovation, its sales volume surged from 2001 to 2004. This implies that the firm continued its growth by actively pursuing innovative activities which created much financial gain in the short term.

Annual revenue of Samsung Electronics. Based on the financial information from Daum ( www.daum.net ) and Hoovers ( www.hoovers.com ) and news articles from Naver ( www.naver.com )

The revenue of the firm diminished drastically in 2007 with the global financial crisis. This “earning shock” was due to the decrease of demands for LCDs and semiconductors [ 49 ]. The global economy was in recession for several years afterward. For example, in 2012, the Federal Reserve Bank announced that the net asset of median family in the USA decreased by 38.8% from December 2007 to June 2009 [ 50 ]. Given that the consumption of middle-class families in the USA has been the locomotive of global economy for decades, the effect of the macro-economic crisis would be challenging for many global firms.

SE executives began to search solutions for the creation of original technologies, while continuing its innovation harvesting efforts. Despite the global financial crisis, SE has continued its growth [ 50 ]. In 2017, the revenue was approximately $224 billion [ 51 ]. SE has steadily expanded its business after it introduced harvesting and planting innovation despite the hostile macro-economic environment and recent ownership succession.

Discussion and evaluation

This study investigated planting and harvesting innovation to answer the research question, “Which classification of innovation best explains the heterogeneous timing of revenue realization?” While harvesting innovation seeks commercial results in a relatively short term, planting innovation pursues the development of new ideas and technologies for a long term. For instance, a firm with the CDMA wireless technology may not succeed financially without the dispersion of CDMA phones. Given the finite amount of resources, firms need to efficiently balance planting and harvesting innovation. Otherwise, they would fail to develop both new products/services for market launching and original technologies for future market expansion while continuing their business activities.

A case analysis was employed to answer the second research question, “How are planting and harvesting activities of innovation implemented in a successful global business firm?” Samsung Electronics (SE) was chosen as a case study since it has become the largest electronics firm in the world but originated from a former emerging economy, South Korea. Despite its limitations, SE continued to grow by using innovation as a vehicle to move from an outsourcing firm to a global leader in innovation. It is a dramatic success story for a local firm in Korea which began its business in the 1970s. Since SE established innovation as the core of its business activities in its mission statement, it has implemented the dual strategy of planting and harvesting innovation.

SE has participated in various activities to develop innovative new technologies as well as products. The interviews reported were collected from news articles to analyze the stream of innovative activities of SE. Harvesting innovation has led to the initiation of a broad range of new products, allowing the firm to access global customers and also received world-renowned innovation awards. SE has also focused on planting innovation which can result in original technologies. Based on Blue Ocean Strategy, the Value Innovation Program (VIP) Centre has been primarily responsible for developing new products. The Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) pursues original technologies which can continuously support technological leadership in the years to come.

Co-innovation [ 1 ] has enabled SE to focus both planting and harvesting innovation activities with limited resources. External collaborators have contributed to the application of SE’s tacit knowledge for convergence that is difficult to imitate by competitors. The VIP Centre and SAIT have played a critical role in encouraging collaboration among innovation value chain partners, including academic researchers, technicians, vendors, and customers to co-create value. It has enabled the firm to pursue innovative outcomes while managing financial stability. The financial performance of SE exhibits that its innovation activities have resulted in a remarkable success.

Conclusions

The digital age is characterized by the increased complexity and uncertainty of the business environment [ 1 ]. In the environment of increasing velocity of change, business firms must develop dynamic capabilities through innovation to adapt to change with agility, flexibility, and speed [ 4 ]. There have been various innovation approaches in the literature: exploitative vs. explorative [ 7 ], disruptive [ 52 ] vs. non-disruptive [ 53 ], ambidexterity [ 54 ], and convergence innovation [ 55 ]. However, the purpose of innovation remains the same, which is to create new or added value by applying ideas or technologies in a fundamentally different way [ 1 ]. What is not widely known is that innovation is not one integrated process. Instead, there are several steps and cycles in innovation. Planting innovation involves creating new ideas, scientific breakthroughs, or new technologies. Planting seeds does not guarantee a good harvest. Many nurturing steps such as careful planning, risk taking, and entrepreneurship are needed to have a successful harvest. Thus, studying the most spectacular success transformation case of SE through its innovation process provides meaningful theoretical and practical insights and a contribution to the literature of innovation.

This study is not free from limitations. Although SE can be considered as one of global leading innovators originated from Korea, a success story from one of the poorest countries in the world to an advanced economy, the generalizability of the single case study can be limited as Tversky and Kahneman [ 56 ] suggested. Future researchers should conduct relevant studies in various contexts to overcome such limitation. In addition, the qualitative analysis tool of Gibbert et al. [ 57 ] can be used to lessen the concern on generalizability.

There are many factors that have contributed to the success of SE. In this study, we used the revenue as the reference of SE’s efforts of harvesting innovation. There could be many other factors that contributed to the performance of SE. However, we believe these factors all contributed to the combined efforts of SE in harvesting innovation.

In addition, it is also expected that future studies may apply more refined research methods to examine the process and consequences of planting and harvesting innovation. While we believe in the merits of the research method applied in this study, it is also possible that executives might have exaggerated the process and outcomes of their projects. Future researchers are expected to cross-check the results of planting and harvesting innovation by utilizing multiple research methods.

Despite the limitations, this research provides several meaningful implications. It uses a distinction of planting and harvesting innovation [ 8 , 9 ] to examine how a firm grows into a global leader despite its finite managerial and financial resources. While planting innovation aims to implement technological advancement as a potential source of long-term profits, harvesting innovation focuses on the development of new products for market expansion in the short term. The framework of planting and harvesting innovation is expected to provide a tool for managers to distribute limited funds for various types of innovation projects. It shall enable them to clarify whether the current focus of innovation investment lies in launching new innovative products or seeking competitive advantage for future profits. The case of Samsung Electronics exhibited that its innovation has focused on both short-term profits and technological innovation for the future growth momentum. Firms are recommended to follow this notion to compete successfully in high tech industries with limited financial, technological, and managerial competencies.

Collaboration is also required for firms seeking both planting and harvesting innovation. Given their shortage of resources and competencies, firms need to share the risks and the burdens of innovation projects with external partners. Following the case of Samsung, they are expected to cooperate with various entities, including research institutions, suppliers, customers, or new ventures. It enables firms to afford the cost of breakthrough innovation despite their finite resources and experiences. Collaboration helps these firms create innovation results for advanced as well as emerging economies.

This study also provides implications from methodological perspectives (Table 2 ). The use of indirect interviews from news articles allowed us to observe the opinions of SE executives over time. In addition, it can collect the opinions of executives at the time of innovative activities rather than asking current employees’ perceptions about what happened in the past. It provides future researchers with an effective method for exploratory research. The use of this underused but promising methodology can contribute to overcoming the limitations of research in the management field despite its possible limitations.

Practitioners can obtain lessons from the results of this study. They could observe how SE, a former emerging market firm, dispersed investment risks by collaborating with the various stakeholders to implement planting innovation. The convergence of internal and external ideas, from suppliers, academia, other businesses, and customers, is essential for the implementation of both types of innovation with finite resources. Furthermore, they need to nurture innovative capabilities of entire internal and external stakeholders as co-innovators. This shall allow firms to achieve the network effect of innovation.

As suggested by Lee [ 4 ], the main focus of innovation projects has been on how to benefit business activities in new ways. Lee [ 58 ] and Schniederjans and Schniederjans [ 59 ] also examined how practical operational issues like quality practices can be improved by innovation.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

Blue Ocean Strategy

Consumer Electronics Association

Cross-functional team

Centre for Intelligent Computing

Collaborative Open Research Expert

Global Research Outreach

Palo Alto Research Center

Point of care testing

Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology

Code-Division Multiple Access

Samsung Talent Program

Value Innovation Program

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Samsung Electronics Declares “Age of Experience” at CES 2020

Samsung showcases human-centered technologies and experiences – a personal care robot, ai-powered home of the future, and a smart city driven by iot and 5g.

Samsung Electronics announced the “Age of Experience” at the opening keynote at CES. As the featured keynote speaker, Samsung Consumer Electronics President and CEO H.S. Kim heralded a decade of human-centric innovation that seamlessly combines hardware and software to create personalized experiences that make life more convenient, more enjoyable, and more meaningful.

The Age of Experience will transform how we care for ourselves and our family, how we can customize our homes to meet our individual needs, and how we can build safer, more sustainable intelligent cities. By showcasing its latest advances in intelligent robotics, AI, 5G and edge computing, Samsung offered a glimpse into the not-so-distant future in which these technologies will come together to offer richer, more adaptive experiences for consumers.

“In the Age of Experience, we need to re-think the space we have to accommodate our diverse and evolving lifestyles,” said H.S. Kim, President and CEO of Consumer Electronics Division, Samsung Electronics. “What makes Samsung’s approach unique is the fact that we have a very clear philosophy built around human-centered innovation. We build and create to solve problems and enhance people’s lives.”

The Next Level of Personal Care

At the core of Samsung’s human-centered vision is personalized care, enhancing the health and well-being of consumers by satisfying their individual needs. During his opening remarks, H.S. Kim unveiled Samsung’s vision of robots as ‘life companions,’ and introduced Ballie, a small, rolling robot that understands you, supports you, and reacts to your needs to be actively helpful around the house.

Sebastian Seung, Executive Vice President and Chief Research Scientist at Samsung Electronics elaborated on Ballie, explaining that its On-Device AI capabilities enable it to be a fitness assistant and a mobile interface that seeks solutions for people’s changing needs. It does all this while maintaining stringent data protection and privacy standards.

“We believe AI is the future of personalized care,” stated Dr. Seung. “We see on-device AI as central to truly personalized experiences. On-device AI puts you in control of your information and protects your privacy, while still delivering the power of personalization.”

Samsung is also showcasing advanced and personalized health solutions. For example, the company has collaborated with Kaiser Permanente to develop a home-based, virtual cardiac rehabilitation solution that pairs a Samsung smartwatch with a smartphone via Bluetooth. Samsung’s HeartWise application sends reminders to the patient to exercise, collects activity data, and continuously displays the patient’s heart rate during workouts. This data is automatically uploaded via the smartphone to the patient’s chart so that clinicians, case managers and physical therapists can track the patient’s progress and engage with them accordingly.

The program enables users to partake in cardiac rehabilitation at home without taking time out of their everyday lives to travel to a hospital or medical clinic. The positive results of the home-based cardiac rehabilitation program were published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) Catalyst last year. Going forward, Samsung will continue to develop human-centric healthcare solutions that cater to the unique needs of the individuals who rely on them.

A Home Tailored to You

Samsung also offered a peek into the future home. Federico Casalegno, Chief Design Innovation Officer of Samsung Design Innovation Center, stated that the home will offer unique, immersive experiences with cutting-edge innovations like AI, sensors and data analysis: “As a living organism, the intelligent home will be a deeply personal space, tailoring experiences for each of us, according to our personal needs.”

Dr. Casalegno highlighted how spatial boundaries of the physical and digital worlds are dissolving, transforming living spaces into bespoke experience-spaces, like an art gallery, yoga studio or other forms of imaginable space. Such blurring of the two realms, according to Dr. Casalegno, is what will transform the home in the next decade.

He led the first-ever immersive demonstration involving Samsung’s GEMS (Gait Enhancing & Motivating System) technology. The demonstration showed how consumers can use AR glasses to work out with a virtual personal trainer, climb a mountain or walk underwater, from the comfort of their living room, while GEMS aggregated and analyzed results to give personalized action recommendations.

Samsung also showed how a room can be transformed with a screen like its MicroLED display, a convergence of software, AI, IoT and hardware. “A screen is not a product – it’s your window to the world, allowing you to instantly connect to your loved ones and friends as if they are in the same room,” said Dr. Casalegno, emphasizing that smart rooms can provide boundless experiences. “People can see and experience almost everything in the world and even the unknown world through the screen.”

Samsung also discussed the evolution of the modern culinary journey where appliances become cooking partners – a personal chef, nutritionist, and shopping assistant rolled into one. Intelligent and innovative technology can customize the entire food experience for consumers—from thoughtful recipe suggestions and meal planning tailored to personal preferences and what’s on-hand, to seamless grocery shopping, delivery and cooking. The company also highlighted a growing station for garden produce at home, and Bot Chef, a robotic food preparation assistant.

Safer and More Sustainable Urban Life in Smart Cities

Pointing to increasing global urbanization, Samsung outlined its smart cities vision, where intelligent systems enabled by smart devices, platforms and data,will make city life much safer and easier. Emily Becher, Senior Vice President and Head of Samsung NEXT Global, said, “We have the tools and the knowledge to create intelligent systems that make living in the city more engaging, safe, and efficient – so that our children, and their children after that can love living in their cities as much as so many of us do today.” She added, “Smart cities that utilize AI, IoT and 5G will transform how we interact with the surrounding environment in ways that maximize convenience and enjoyment”.

With IoT technology expanding its reach beyond the home to all types of buildings, Samsung’s core vision lies in saving energy, cutting down emissions and helping to achieve sustainability as populations grow.

Smart buildings will also make life more connected and convenient. For example, smart building residents will be able to call elevators, turn lights off, manage deliveries or check for parking spots with a simple swipe or voice command. Intelligent appliances installed in smart buildings will request repairs and address problems before residents even notice the issue.

In realizing the goal of creating a smart city with smart buildings, Samsung emphasized the importance of open collaboration. The company is working towards building partnerships with builders and property managers like Greystar Real Estate Partners, a leading U.S.-based global real estate developer, with which it will devise smart building solutions. “With smart buildings, the residents’ experience will get smarter, more efficient, more effective, so they utilize less energy,” said Bob Faith, Chairman and CEO of Greystar. “Samsung has the ability to bring all the technologies together and that convergence of the technologies in one place is really critical.”

Samsung also demonstrated how the combination of 5G, edge computing and AI will transform the urban transportation experience. Becher shared the company’s vision to lead the new era of vehicles, with 5G technology enabling Vehicle-to-Everything communication, which will seamlessly connect cars to the rest of the city.

Becher added that smart cities combined with 5G will be able to provide experiences unimaginable a few years ago to communities. She noted, “Faster and easier digital connection with each other will strengthen our sense of community and create entirely new forms of interaction.”

Building A Better Place for All

Concluding his 2020 CES keynote address, H.S. Kim stressed that the company is focused on using technology to create a better place for all. He highlighted three key areas of importance for the company going forward: security and privacy, technology for good, and citizenship.

Kim made clear that as an industry leader, the company’s commitment to data security and personal privacy will not waver, and that the protection of security and privacy will be a top priority as technology advances. He stated that the most important thing is putting people in control over their information, “Samsung will never share your data with third parties without prior and direct consent from you.”

He further emphasized that Samsung Knox, the company’s defense-grade security platform, will continue to expand to protect a growing array of Samsung’s devices—from mobile and TVs to home appliances and more. “We will further ensure transparent data management and transfer by advancing our data protection efforts with on-device AI, edge computing, and blockchain technology.”

Samsung also showcased how it is innovating for good, with technologies like Relúmĭno, which can help the visually-impaired see; IGNIS, a tool that helps firefighters make their jobs safer; and GEMS that helps the elderly and disabled to move.

Samsung also underscored a key pillar of its CSR vision, “Together for Tomorrow! Enabling People,” by announcing the expansion of the Samsung Innovation Campus program in 2020. Leveraging the success of the many educational programs from the last decade, Samsung Innovation Campus provides the next generation with training on the latest AI, IoT, and cloud technologies. Samsung said the campus has educated more than 20,000 students from 13 countries since its launch in 2019 and will double in size this year.

By providing education for future generations, Samsung is furthering its philosophy that technology’s purpose is to solve social problems and empower people to achieve more to make a better world.

For more information about the details disclosed at CES 2020, including photos and videos, please visit news.samsung.com . Samsung’s CES booth #15006 is on Level 1 of Central Hall in the Las Vegas Convention Center and will be open from January 7 10:00 a,m. till January 10 4:00 p.m, 2020.

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• [Editorial] Samsung Electronics in the ‘Age of Experience’
• Samsung’s Family Hub Brings Food AI and Automation into the Kitchen at CES 2020
• Samsung Unveils New Category of Innovative Lifestyle Home Appliances at CES 2020
• Samsung Electronics Unveils 2020 QLED 8K TV at CES
• Recapping the Biggest Announcements and Reveals From Samsung’s CES 2020 Keynote
• [Video] 9 Highlights From Samsung’s CES 2020 Keynote

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Within just a few months, Samsung experienced a significant lift in NPS and CSAT by launching a Yext-powered Help Site.

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Samsung is a household name and one of the world's largest electronics companies. Providing exceptional service to its millions of customers is paramount, and the business regularly seeks to adopt innovative ways of improving the support experience. Like many companies, one of Samsung's most effective customer support channels has been its Help Site . For five years, Scott Messina, Director of Search and Design Strategy, has been improving and optimizing the Help Site to better serve users looking for answers. "There's a support side to samsung.com, and I basically manage that end-to-end," says Messina. "My responsibilities include things like SEO, product management, design, analytics, and content strategy."

Soon after March 2020, traffic to Samsung's website exploded. With more people working from home, the usage of cell phones, TVs, and kitchen appliances spiked across the board. Messina and his team were generally prepared for the accompanying surge in search volume to the Samsung help site. However, their legacy search solution, Elasticsearch, was unpredictable and didn't always yield relevant results. "The reality is that sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't. Sometimes there was a bad experience waiting at the end for someone who searched," he says.

The Challenge

Management of the Samsung help site was the responsibility of Messina and one full-time engineer. They were strapped for bandwidth, and the relative complexity of Elasticsearch proved difficult for such a small team. "We needed engineers to make even the most basic edits. It just wasn't sustainable," says Messina.

Without the availability of a dedicated services component from Elasticsearch, Messina's group was forced to become entirely self-sufficient. They soon recognized the need for a new search provider if they were to make any meaningful improvements to Samsung's online support experience. What they needed was an advanced, yet intuitive tool that came with a team ready to assist with implementation and continuous optimization.

The Solution

Samsung ultimately decided to transform its help site with Yext's support solutions . Messina's team, led by his colleague, Jio Duperoy, used the expansive Data Connector framework to quickly develop a robust CMS with articles, FAQs, YouTube videos, and more. "We have roughly 2,500 help articles, and that's the main thing we wanted to have indexed. We've been optimizing this content library for years, so it was great that we could just flip a switch and be ready to go," says Messina. "Switching over to Yext, not just for search but also for knowledge management, has freed us from all of the baggage and tech debt that we had built up over the years with Elasticsearch."

Switching over to Yext, not just for search but also for knowledge management, has freed us from all of the baggage and tech debt that we had built up over the years with Elasticsearch.

Scott Messina

Director of Search & Design Strategy

Yext's unique multi-algorithm approach piqued Messina's interest when Samsung was evaluating new vendors. Specifically, he was impressed that Yext technology could create a Google-like search experience. "I first saw featured snippets in action on Google and have been interested in them as a concept ever since. What Yext is doing with Extractive QA is the exact same thing," says Messina. "On samsung.com, I can now search 'what temperature should my fridge be?' and the answer isn't a document or a few paragraphs — it's literally a number. Similarly, searching 'how often should I replace the water filter in my fridge?' gives a direct result. Extractive QA finds the right answers within our [Yext Content] and surfaces them without any additional work on our end."

With search analytics ready right out of the box, Samsung can easily monitor performance. These findings have already influenced certain aspects of Samsung's content strategy. "The data from Yext is highlighting where we have gaps," says Messina. "It's really helpful that Yext clusters related queries together like 'replace my remote' and 'can't find my remote.' Historically, it's been a manual effort to lump all of these queries together, but now it's done automatically. Yext can cluster dozens of queries together that all have the same meaning, which makes it easy to identify where we can improve."

Messina now has the ability to independently test and optimize CTAs without relying on a team of engineers. This flexibility allows Samsung to improve and adapt in real time to customer behavior — something that becomes even more important as Messina looks ahead to busy times like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. "We want to continue optimizing and increasing clickthrough rates to set ourselves up nicely for the surge in search volume that comes during the holiday season," says Messina. "If someone searches for an answer, gets it, and is then on their way, that's one happier customer who doesn't have to deal with a phone call."

Although his team has since grown beyond just one full-time engineer, Messina has been grateful to have Jio's dedicated attention and Yext's Managed Services offering available as a continued resource. "With Yext, we have access to subject matter experts and a team that very much feels like an extension of our own," says Messina. "The Yext team was incredibly helpful in getting us up and running and I know that they'll continue to play a big role moving forward."

The Results

Within eleven weeks of launching Yext's support solutions, Samsung saw significant growth in every major customer satisfaction metric across NPS score (+45%), CSAT (+33%), Issues Resolved (+15%), and surveys completed (8x+). With Yext, Messina's team got unparalleled insights into searches and CTA performance and used those insights to boost CTR on those CTAs by 40%. Promoted help articles and other pieces of content saw over a 200% lift in CTR.

All told, Samsung increased customer engagement with its help site by 19% — streamlining the path to resolution and delighting customers along the way.

"Before Yext, search on samsung.com was pretty typical relative to what other companies were doing. There was a magnifying glass at the top of the page, but its job was to sell phones, TVs, and fridges — its job was not to answer questions," says Messina. "But now, we've gone live with Yext's support solutions and it's doing what it needs to do. Our KPIs are moving in the right direction and we already have our eyes on other Yext solutions to further enhance the Samsung support experience."

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We then activated our ecosystem of impact leaders and innovators with a call for nominations, mapped the landscape of American social entrepreneurs and engaged in proactive outreach to relevant innovator communities and accelerators.

Through the call for nominations, we helped Samsung NEXT identify and engage 400+ entrepreneurs, and filter to choose five finalists. We created and distributed compelling video content to tell the powerful stories behind each finalist, and moved several of the top-performing nominees into Samsung’s pipeline for potential investment.

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• Samsung Case Study

The case I chose for my Public Relations class was the Samsung Spirit of Sport Contest, Samsung’s Olympic Campaign in the US. I also used this for my University’s writing requirement and passed.

This campaign happened during the Salt Lake 2002 Olympic Games and it was essentially was an essay contest that asked entrants to identify and write about a mentor or individual in their lifetime that has both motivated the through challenges, and positively influenced their growth with on or off the playing field. Samsung would then choose five essay winners to fly them and their mentors out to the winter games  where they would be recognized. Samsung thoroughly wanted to focus on how encouragement from sports mentors can greatly enhance success in the youth. Samsung was already a highly respected company at the time, and partnering up with The Olympics would further gain brand awareness and help them reach their goal of becoming a global leader who promoted global friendship. They targeted on a few audiences like general consumers and sports related committees, but they also thoroughly focused on USA markets in general to hopefully succeed in collaborating with a foreign company, since Samsung is South Korean company. 

I applied this case to the agenda-setting theory because Samsung had to come up with efficient ways to promote their campaign in the media through a time when the media was booming with stories about 9/11. They needed to make their essay contest newsworthy to both readers and gatekeepers. The Agenda- Setting theory occurs when the media informs the users of what really matters, the more a story pops up the more society thinks that story is important. Samsung had to do this by holding a “kick off” press release in where 600 U.S. media would attend. Samsung incorporated media tours, online pop up ads, and planned events to help generate awareness for the campaign. They even got coverage on popular television stations such as FOX, NBC, and CBS. They also contracted with high profile U.S. athletes to go on media tours and write their own essays, which was a valuable success because it made the contest more relevant and personable. Samsungs initial goal was to create attention about the importance of a mentor, and the impact they have on forming a brighter future. This goal lead to other individuals taking part in the level of media coverage the campaign received because each winning essay chosen, tied in a personal story with it, making it more reader friendly.  Personal stories are effective when building a brand name or gaining brand recognition because they are one of the most powerful approaches to inspire, influence, and teach. Stories not only help unite and forge connections between people, but they also accentuate the values from within. Although this campaign does not necessarily focus on politics and chronic social issues, there was still a fight for media attention, and a strategy determined to persuade audiences to enter the contest and think about why it matters.

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Private: Galaxy Tab S9, S9+, S9 Ultra: Which is right for your business?

10 tips for getting more out of your Galaxy Tab S9

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Samsung introduces our first-ever ai tablet.

Tablets are among the most versatile mobile devices in business. More than personal productivity tools, they can be turned into kiosks, mobile point-of-sale terminals or a digital means of signing documents. AI can not only build upon these capabilities but enhance all the traditional tasks where tablets have become indispensable.

Already,  73% of U.S. companies have implemented AI  in at least some areas of their business, but most likely within their core sales, marketing and customer service platforms. The next frontier is on-device AI, which combines the hardware necessary to handle AI compute workloads with features tailored to mobile users. It’s a fast-growing market:  Research firm Gartner predicts  AI mobile devices like  Galaxy S24  and AI PCs like  Galaxy Book4 Series  will represent 22% of shipments across both categories in 2024.

Samsung is leading innovation in this space by bringing its Galaxy AI to tablets like  Galaxy Tab S9 Series  and offering a portfolio of premium tablets with AI capabilities to fit multiple use cases and customer needs. This approach lets companies use AI to keep ideas flowing, do business without borders and make ordinary projects epic — all while protecting work data against leaks or misuse with  Knox Platform for Enterprise .

Galaxy Tab S9 Series is already known for its  PC-like performance and smart multitasking features , but the addition of Galaxy AI can transform everyday work all over again in three critical areas. Here’s how:

1. Productivity

A lightweight, portable tablet with models ranging in display size from 11 inches to a 14.6-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display, the Galaxy Tab S9 Series is ideal for business professionals working from anywhere. Galaxy AI can make it even easier to manage the information shown on these displays while also helping to summarize, format and translate it.

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Let’s say you’re using your Galaxy Tab S9 Series device to read through a client’s request for proposal (RFP) and come across a term you don’t recognize. Instead of popping out of the document and into a search engine, simply circle the term with your finger. Circle to Search with Google immediately brings up the definition you need, letting you continue without missing a beat.

Circle to Search with Google can also save time when you spot an image on social media that could be repurposed for your next marketing campaign, but you need to check the source for copyright. Just circle it! When it’s time to meet a client at a restaurant in an area you rarely visit, Circle to Search with Google can serve up precise locations.

For more in-depth online research — such as poring over a government website to understand your regulatory compliance obligations — Browsing Assist provides similar time savings and streamlined workflows. It’s a Galaxy AI feature that summarizes the most important content on a website, so you can see what you need to know at a glance. You can also use it when you need to grasp the fundamentals of an analyst report or the value proposition of a new supplier or partner.

Galaxy AI is just as helpful when you’re trying to capture information and develop ideas. Galaxy Tab S9 Series devices have always been great for taking notes, whether by using  Samsung DeX  for a more PC-like experience or by hand with the  S Pen . With  Note Assist , though, you can now format what you jotted down during a client meeting into easy-to-digest bullet points, organize notes with your other content or even translate your notes into another language. Think of Note Assist as a highly efficient admin that lets you focus on key objectives, like closing another deal.

Of course, many of us now spend as much time on video calls as in-person meetings, and it’s often necessary to record them for those who couldn’t make it. Transcript Assist can not only capture what was said but also provide key takeaways that help everyone get moving more quickly on their action items.

2. Communication

Premium tablets not only let you complete individual tasks but also stay connected with team members and customers. Even when you can see and hear everyone on a call perfectly clearly, though, language barriers can be a problem. Galaxy AI features like  Live Translate  and Interpreter change that.

When you’re meeting international or even local clients who speak in a foreign language, Live Translate lets you understand what’s being said in real time and reply with your Galaxy Tab S9. Interpreter offers similar convenience when you’re having those kinds of meetings in person, letting you keep the conversation going without worrying about translation.

Galaxy Tab S9 Series is also great for sending emails and using chat apps to foster greater collaboration. Until Galaxy AI, though, the onus had been on you to avoid making errors or phrasing things in a way that might create the wrong impression with an important contact.

Chat Assist, for instance, not only fixes any embarrassing typos but also helps you strike the right tone. For a team member or trusted colleague, a more casual voice might be the best way to provide guidance or coaching. A customer, on the other hand, may expect a more professional tone. Chat Assist can provide suggestions to help in either scenario.

3. Creativity

A customer may be willing to provide you with a testimonial, but only while you’re both at an industry conference. The best moments of your company’s off-site might be forgotten if you don’t take a picture for posterity. Success on social media requires a constant influx of quality images and videos.

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Galaxy Tab S9 Series has an ultra-wide front camera with auto-framing and noise-canceling mics to help with this kind of content production. However, many of us were never trained as professional photographers and videographers, which can make creating content both time-consuming and nerve-wracking.

Enter Generative Edit, a Galaxy AI feature that can remove unwanted objects, adjust colors and make other suggestions to fine-tune your photos. Instant Slow-Mo, meanwhile, makes it easy to turn basic videos into epic replays. This can enhance a demo of your products and services for a prospective client without having to hire an ad agency or professional studio team.

How Galaxy AI enables stronger security and control

For all its benefits, people are sometimes concerned about what AI means in terms of data security and ethical use. You should always be able to use the technology with confidence that it meets the expectations of customers, employees and other third parties.

From a security standpoint, Galaxy Tab S9 Series and other Galaxy AI devices comply with Google’s Secure AI Framework, which requires strict AI data controls and storage that ensure enterprise security, safety and privacy. They also come with built-in enterprise-grade security and management through  Samsung Knox , offering a range of multi-layered encryption options to guard your data at rest and protect your data in transit.

As you use Galaxy AI features on your Galaxy Tab S9 Series premium tablet, the underlying architecture clearly separates how data is handled on the device and in the cloud. AI data is processed only after application privileges have been verified and is restricted to authorized applications.

With Knox Platform for Enterprise, you can even decide whether to allow data processing in the cloud to take advantage of the full Galaxy AI functionality or to limit all data processing to the device itself. These controls mean you can empower your business with AI productivity, communication and creativity tools while protecting work data against leaks or misuse. In addition, Galaxy Tab S9 Series tablets are regularly maintained with Samsung’s quarterly security maintenance releases (SMRs), which keep them up to date and protect users and their data against any potential system threats.

This approach is not limited to Galaxy Tab S9 Series. It’s consistent across the entire Galaxy ecosystem, ushering in a new era of AI-powered transformation to businesses of every kind.

Does the Tab S9 Series offer the right devices for your business needs? Read on with this  overview of Samsung’s tablet offerings .   And see how you can get the most out of   Samsung DeX   on your Galaxy tablet.

Shane Schick

Shane Schick tells stories that help people innovate, and to manage the change that innovation brings. He has written extensively for CIOs, CMOs and other senior enterprise decision makers as a journalist. As a content marketer, he has worked with some of the largest brands to the most disruptive startups.

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‘My old doctor told me there was nothing he could do. He told me it was my fault’: Wegovy revolution sees 600% increase among young adults

At 17, Israel McKenzie was so burdened by obesity that he stopped going to high school in person and was embarrassed to speak to people at his restaurant job.

“I was in a really dark place,” says McKenzie, whose weight had climbed to 335 pounds on his 6-foot-1 frame, despite repeated efforts to diet and exercise. “I had given up hope.”

But last year, the weight-loss drug Wegovy helped him shed 110 pounds in nine months, making the rural Tennessee teen part of a surge of adolescents and young adults using diabetes and obesity medications known as GLP-1 receptor agonists,  new research shows .

Even as millions of older adults clamor for drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy, monthly use of the medications soared in people aged 12 to 25. That’s according to the new analysis of dispensing records from nearly 94% of U.S. retail pharmacies from 2020 to 2023.

The report, published in the journal JAMA on Wednesday, used the IQVIA prescription database to compile the first look at the national uptake of GLP-1 drugs among that age group. Nearly 31,000 children aged 12 to 17 and more than 162,000 people aged 18 to 25 used the medications in 2023 alone, said Dr. Joyce Lee, a University of Michigan pediatrician and diabetes expert who led the research.

“What it’s suggesting is that it’s one of the tools in the toolbox and there are more providers prescribing this medication for the population,” she said.

The report shows that the number of 12- to 25-year-olds using any GLP-1 drug — including older medications first approved to treat diabetes in 2005 and for weight loss in 2014 — climbed from about 8,700 a month in 2020 to more than 60,000 a month in 2023, a nearly 600% increase. The rise occurred even as prescriptions of other drugs among those patients fell by about 3%.

Those who received the drugs were just a fraction of young people who struggle with obesity, Lee noted. About  20% of U.S. children and adolescents  and  about 42%  of adults have the chronic disease, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In early 2023, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that children and teens with obesity  be evaluated early  and  treated aggressively , including with surgery and medication if warranted.

McKenzie, the Tennessee teen, said he began gaining weight five years ago, during puberty.

“I started turning to food for all of my problems,” he said.

The extra weight made his asthma worse and put him in danger of developing diabetes, his doctor said. He tried to follow medical advice by cutting out sugary soda and snack foods and exercising more, but the efforts failed to make a difference.

“My old doctor told me there was nothing he could do,” he said. “He told me it was my fault.”

In early 2023, McKenzie connected with Dr. Joani Jack, a pediatric obesity specialist at Children’s Hospital at Erlanger in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who regularly prescribes GLP-1 drugs for kids.

“I told him I’ve seen 10 other people just like you today and we have lots of tools and treatment options,” Jack said. Those typically include intensive behavioral and nutrition interventions combined with medication, if necessary.

In McKenzie’s case, Jack prescribed the weight-loss drug Wegovy, which in late 2022 was approved for use in U.S. children over age 12. More than 6,000 kids in that age group received Wegovy in 2023, the new data show. More than 7,600 received Ozempic, which is approved to treat diabetes in adults, but can be used off-label in adolescents. Others received older GLP-1 drugs such as Saxenda and Trulicity.

McKenzie said he had no notable side effects from the medication, but Lee noted that some young people report nausea, vomiting or constipation, including symptoms so serious that they stop the drugs.

It’s important to understand the surging use of these medications in young people, Lee said. The drugs are meant for continuing use, so “we really need to think about the long-term safety and effectiveness of these medications for this population,” she said.

In addition, the drugs are expensive and often  difficult to obtain , either because of supply problems or because they’re not covered by insurance.

Notably, government-run Medicaid plans paid for nearly half of the GLP-1 drugs prescribed to 12- to 17-year-olds and about a quarter of those used by people aged 18 to 25, the research found. Commercial insurance covered care for nearly 44% of the younger kids and about two-thirds of those who were older.

Today, McKenzie says his asthma is better and he looks forward to interacting with co-workers and friends.

“I have a lot of self-confidence now, a lot more than I used to,” he said. “It has changed everything.”

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2024/05/16/new-rshe-guidance-what-it-means-for-sex-education-lessons-in-schools/

New RSHE guidance: What it means for sex education lessons in schools

R elationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) is a subject taught at both primary and secondary school.  

In 2020, Relationships and Sex Education was made compulsory for all secondary school pupils in England and Health Education compulsory for all pupils in state-funded schools.  

Last year, the Prime Minister and Education Secretary brought forward the first review of the curriculum following reports of pupils being taught inappropriate content in RSHE in some schools.  

The review was informed by the advice of an independent panel of experts. The results of the review and updated guidance for consultation has now been published.   

We are now asking for views from parents, schools and others before the guidance is finalised. You can find the consultation here .   

What is new in the updated curriculum?  

Following the panel’s advice, w e’re introducing age limits, to ensure children aren’t being taught about sensitive and complex subjects before they are ready to fully understand them.    

We are also making clear that the concept of gender identity – the sense a person may have of their own gender, whether male, female or a number of other categories   – is highly contested and should not be taught. This is in line with the cautious approach taken in our gu idance on gender questioning children.  

Along with other factors, teaching this theory in the classroom could prompt some children to start to question their gender when they may not have done so otherwise, and is a complex theory for children to understand.   

The facts about biological sex and gender reassignment will still be taught.  

The guidance for schools also contains a new section on transparency with parents, making it absolutely clear that parents have a legal right to know what their children are being taught in RSHE and can request to see teaching materials.   

In addition, we’re seeking views on adding several new subjects to the curriculum, and more detail on others. These include:   

• Suicide prevention  
• Sexual harassment and sexual violence  
• L oneliness  
• The prevalence of 'deepfakes’  
• Healthy behaviours during pregnancy, as well as miscarriage  
• Illegal online behaviours including drug and knife supply  
• The dangers of vaping   
• Menstrual and gynaecological health including endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and heavy menstrual bleeding.  

What are the age limits?   

In primary school, we’ve set out that subjects such as the risks about online gaming, social media and scams should not be taught before year 3.   

Puberty shouldn’t be taught before year 4, whilst sex education shouldn’t be taught before year 5, in line with what pupils learn about conception and birth as part of the national curriculum for science.  

In secondary school, issues regarding sexual harassment shouldn’t be taught before year 7, direct references to suicide before year 8 and any explicit discussion of sexual activity before year 9.  

Do schools have to follow the guidance?  

Following the consultation, the guidance will be statutory, which means schools must follow it unless there are exceptional circumstances.   

There is some flexibility w ithin the age ratings, as schools will sometimes need to respond to questions from pupils about age-restricted content, if they come up earlier within their school community.   

In these circumstances, schools are instructed to make sure that teaching is limited to the essential facts without going into unnecessary details, and parents should be informed.  

When will schools start teaching this?  

School s will be able to use the guidance as soon as we publish the final version later this year.   

However, schools will need time to make changes to their curriculum, so we will allow an implementation period before the guidance comes into force.     

What can parents do with these resources once they have been shared?

This guidance has openness with parents at its heart. Parents are not able to veto curriculum content, but they should be able to see what their children are being taught, which gives them the opportunity to raise issues or concerns through the school’s own processes, if they want to.

Parents can also share copyrighted materials they have received from their school more widely under certain circumstances.

If they are not able to understand materials without assistance, parents can share the materials with translators to help them understand the content, on the basis that the material is not shared further.

Copyrighted material can also be shared under the law for so-called ‘fair dealing’ - for the purposes of quotation, criticism or review, which could include sharing for the purpose of making a complaint about the material.

This could consist of sharing with friends, families, faith leaders, lawyers, school organisations, governing bodies and trustees, local authorities, Ofsted and the media.  In each case, the sharing of the material must be proportionate and accompanied by an acknowledgment of the author and its ownership.

Under the same principle, parents can also share relevant extracts of materials with the general public, but except in cases where the material is very small, it is unlikely that it would be lawful to share the entirety of the material.

These principles would apply to any material which is being made available for teaching in schools, even if that material was provided subject to confidentiality restrictions.

Do all children have to learn RSHE?  

Parents still have the right to withdraw their child from sex education, but not from the essential content covered in relationships educatio n.  

You may also be interested in:

• Education Secretary's letter to parents: You have the right to see RSHE lesson material
• Sex education: What is RSHE and can parents access curriculum materials?
• What do children and young people learn in relationship, sex and health education

Tags: age ratings , Gender , Relationships and Sex Education , RSHE , sex ed , Sex education

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