Intellectual Property and Innovation

¶ … Marketing Strategy

The Samsung Approach -- Brand Identity / Awareness / Recall -- Essentials of a consumer brand

These days, the Windows and Android operating systems are arguably the best of the pack with Android getting 80.7% customer use and the title of the best and most-used OS globally. Android OS, which can also be applied in the educational sector, is an open source OS which gives its user the freedom to mount applications bought from other producers as well as untrusted developers (Divya & Krishnakumar, 2016). The brand Samsung, enjoy relative customer appreciation in America and it ended the year 2009 leading the mobile markets. One of the foremost measurement indexes for preferred mobile brands, Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index, carries out surveys of phones based on customer appreciation of mobile performance and design. From their smartphone and mobile survey, the highest ranked brands were Apple, Samsung and Blackberry in descending order. Samsung's intensive brand promotions have had huge effects on the customer base, an effect identified by Mile Luttrell of Brand Keys. In Mike's report, he disclosed that from the surveys, 54% of customers would prefer an iPhone while the customers who would go for Samsung increased by 5% due to their intensive sponsorship and promotion activities. One of their biggest promotions till date was their sponsorship of the Athens 2004 Olympics, one which raised the brand awareness from 57% to 62%. This promotion equally helped shape its reputation and image which led to a sharp rise in sales (Azzawi & Nzube Ezeh, 2012).

The IBM Approach -- High-margin business / Invest in long-term solution offerings

Due to the development of new work processes and the yearning of workers to effectively juggle both personal and work careers, several firms have started providing less rigid work plans in order to attract the top professionals and to keep their best workers happy (Stiles & Trevor, 2006).

i. Leadership Development -- A common factor of the studied top companies is their focus on developing leadership capability in its workers. Also, though every single company studied backs skill development and knowledge training, a fraction of these take it more serious than others. Take for example; IBM spends over $700 million every year in training and increasing the knowledge of its employees. Their workers expend an average of 16 million hours in a year, which means around 50 hours each per worker, getting trained via web-based lectures and activities or via normal classroom lectures and practical activities.

ii. Diversity programs -- These are developed and mainly used by the studied companies in attracting, training, keeping and encouraging talented individuals. One example of a company which have taken greater pain in showcasing and improving the abilities or potential among their pool of workers is IBM. IBM achieved this by creating a sense of appreciation of variety, which they enforced in all sectors of the company with the aim of hearing different views on the problems which are general or specific to a sector.

The Innovation Approach

Innovation is a major force of improvement in firms and the products they produce and it has great effect on the customer base via the creation of a defined improved feature over others. The way innovations work is they exploit the resources available in the firm based on certain innovative mechanisms with the aim of creating novel products to consumers and these in turn, bring in profit to the firm dependent on sales. Nonetheless, innovations could be helped in the area of competitive sales by supporting it with proper advertisement and promotion programs. There are specific type of programs, known as 'innovation events' and these are what helps innovations to succeed on the market. These programs, which convert 'innovation events' to 'innovations,' are known as innovation process systems. Also, innovations are quite important in the development of assets, an area known as intellectual property. They also help build and sustain profit and they manifest in jointly-created as well as common value. Specifically, innovation aims to enhance and grow the amount of value delivered to the buyers with an accompanied change in the features, function and importance of the new products to the customer (Kanagal, 2015). The advertising method the firm employs should be dependent on the inferences drawn from a thorough examination of the production method. For IBM and Samsung, Samsung showed better plans to take over the mobile market. They displayed a better positioning to grow and keep up with the market especially with the novel concepts which were creating a new rivalry in the market; therefore, they were able to keep their customers despite the stiff competition from other popular brands like Google, Apple, Motorola etc. For IBM instead, they find themselves in a dire situation as they are getting swept off the market by companies like Dell, Nutanix and Amazon.

Innovation causes an alteration of the conventional processes in firms as well as their products and it is an effective tool for advertising firms in achieving higher market share via the introduction of marked improvement over other competing products. According to Peter F. Drucker; 'there is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer' and 'the business enterprise has two and only two basic functions: marketing and innovation'.