History
Samsung Group is currently a multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul. In 1938 when Samsung was founded in Daegu (Korea), it was initially a trading company, selling dried Korean fish, vegetables, and fruit to Manchuria and Beijing. (Samsung) Just after a little more than a decade, it owned flour mills and confectionery machines and began its own manufacturing and sales operations.
During the 1970s, Samsung (for the first time) began exporting electronic products, and in 1978, Samsung Semiconductor and Samsung Electronics became separate entities. Soon after in the 1980s, they increased their focus on technology and this had led to the creation of ...view middle of the document...
d.).
As mentioned, Samsung has a huge number of operations and they support products and services in many industry. They include the electronics industry, machinery & heavy industry, chemical industry, financial services and other sectors in which their affiliated company are in.
Macro-environmental forces
For this particular report, our group has decided to focus our attention to Samsung’s recent product, the Galaxy S4, and its sales in the US market. Additionally, to analyse the macro-environment, we have decided to apply the PEST framework. (Husso, 2011)
Political/Legal: Due to the existence of “patent trolls” (Fowler, 2013) in the U.S. patent system, Samsung had to divert a significant sum of its resources to fight lawsuits involving patent infringements. For example, in 2012 alone, Samsung picked up 37 lawsuits, ranking in as 2nd place amongst the top targets of patent trolls. Furthermore, there were few effective measures by the U.S. Government to tackle the issue. (Thomson, 2013) Due to the competitive nature of the smartphone industry, companies have also been aggressive in protecting their intellectual properties by suing competitors for patent infringements. A prominent example would be the prolonged lawsuit between Samsung and Apple in the United States that occurred in 2012. (The Guardian) This might have had a significant impact on some of the consumers to turn to other alternatives (iPhone, HTC, etc.) on the grounds of ethics, or even due to the assumption that the “original” is always better.
Economic: Furthermore, during the year when Samsung Galaxy S4 was released in the US, the unemployment rate in the country was still considerably high (Hall, 2012), which generally leads to a lower discretionary income for the unemployed. Consumer sentiments were also poor due to expected cuts in government spending and lackluster economic data, leading to weaker spending. (Smialek, 2013) Thus, sales of the Galaxy S4 could have been considerably affected by the high rate of unemployment.
Social: Online social networks are getting increasingly popular among the current generation. (nielson, 2012) With significantly large groups of people connecting through various platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, the population of smartphone users has increased tremendously as they yearn for faster and easier access to these virtual communication arenas. Moreover, a significant proportion of the smartphone users are from generation Y, which makes up one of the fastest growing demographic groups in the US. (Dorsey, 2013) As such, it is important for Samsung to keep all these in mind when developing a marketing plan for the Galaxy S4.
Technology: The rapid progress of technological innovations in the smartphone industry has forced many smartphone makers to invest heavily in R&D so that they are able to keep up with the competition and create significant points of difference. (Business Wire, 2013) Likewise, Samsung is subjected to the...
