Samsung How Did Samsung Emerge From a

Samsung How did Samsung emerge from a copycat brand to a product leader? CEO Lee Kunhee, who is also the chairman of Samsung, made up his mind in 1993 that his company would set out on a goal to basically beat out Sony for the title of the biggest consumer products company in the world.

Sony, a Japanese firm, had been on top of the list of consumer products for a long time, and frankly there has always been competition between Korea and Japan (Japan occupied Korea during many years of the 20th century). So is was not hard to figure out why the CEO would want to create "…sleek, bold, and beautiful products" that would appeal to high-end users, according to the article in Chapter 9.

In order to achieve his goal, Lee hired a group of talented young designer and gave them the challenge to create products that had to pass what the author calls the "wow" test. Along with the new design strategy, Lee decided to avoid selling its products in budget and discount-type stores (like Wal-Mart and Kmart) and went more upscale.

It took about twenty years but Lee's Samsung Company has definitely topped Sony and is "…now by far the largest consumer electronics company in the world" -- and it produces televisions, cell phones, DVD players, digital cameras and camcorders, laser printers and other home appliances. Is Samsung's product development process customer centered? Team based? Systematic? Actually all three of those strategies are being played out by Samsung to one degree or another.

Samsung made a point of creating products that not only were high-tech and performed better than other products, but the company built into the designs artistic styling. Clearly that was a deliberate choice that Lee made to appeal to the customer. No one could mistake a Samsung product for another "cheap" product because the looks are very different than the cheap brands. Hence, observers know that Samsung was going after certain customers -- and not necessarily those who shop at Wall-Mart.

Also, because Lee brought in a team of young, creative and innovative designers, it could be said that his launch twenty years ago was a "team-based" strategy. Because Samsung is forward thinking and trying to develop products that "talk to each other" and planning to develop smartphones that can have their images transferred seamlessly to big screen televisions -- and because they are aggressively, systematically launching new and innovative products, they are certainly to be considered systematic.

Based on the PLC, what challenges does Samsung face in managing its high-tech products? Samsung is a public limited company (PLC), and that means that the ebb and flow of the markets could offer challenging financial implications. The high tech aspect of Samsung means that it is in direct competition with Apple and must continue producing its own proprietary software, its own computer chips and must continue putting enormous amounts of money in research and development and building new factories.

Also, in order to get ahead of the competition in terms of overall market share, it sometimes has to lower its prices, reducing profits. Will Samsung likely achieve its goals in markets it does not dominate? Based on the.