Introduction
In this presentation, I will evaluate Samsung’s integrated marketing communication plan by reviewing its current objectives and comparing them against the potential for employing customer-centric models of communication to meet the needs and requirements of Millennials, who are the preferred target market for its smartphone business. By analyzing the needs of the firm’s stakeholders, including those of its customers and shareholders, I will make recommendations on how Samsung can achieve the aforementioned objectives by building cross-functional relationships across its business divisions to increase its market share in the smartphone business.
Current Integrated Marketing Communication Tools
Samsung is one of the world’s most successful smartphone manufacturers, with a market share of about 18.8% (Statista, 2021). Ironically, with such significant control of the smartphone business, it relies on traditional forms of communication, such as email marketing and television and print advertising, which are ineffective in meeting its marketing objectives. At the same time, it uses public relations as a key part of its marketing communications tools, which has a moderate effect on its overall marketing plan. These instruments of market communication adopted by the tech giant promote a non-specific target marketing plan, which is business-centric, as opposed to customer-centric. Consequently, there is a need to redesign them to better appeal to the current needs of its stakeholders.
Business Stakeholders
Developing a robust marketing plan requires an intricate understanding of business stakeholders’ needs because their interests drive the marketing objectives of a business (Ross, 2019) ). This statement is also true for Samsung because its marketing goals are designed to align with the interests of customers, governments, employees, community groups, and shareholders, who are its main stakeholders. Particularly, emphasis is made on understanding how the firm’s marketing communication plans could best meet the interests of Millennial customers, who are the main target demographic for sustaining the firm’s market expansion objectives. In this presentation, millennials are defined as a generation of young customers born between 1980 and 2000 who have an interest in technology and its associated tools (Ross, 2019).
Evaluating Portfolio Marketing Objectives: 4C Evaluative Model
For this evaluative part of the report, I used Lauterborn’s 4C model to assess Samsung’s marketing objectives. It proposes a customer-centric model of evaluating the marketing objectives of a firm and helps marketers to understand how their campaigns meet consumer needs, satisfy a firm’s marketing objectives, address the needs of customers to obtain goods conveniently, and promote the efficacy of communication (Jeyasekar & Saravanan, 2019). Based on these four criteria of assessment, Samsung’s traditional marketing strategy registers a poor performance in all four areas mentioned. In other words, it fails to meet consumer wants and needs because it is out of touch with the fast-paced nature of Millennial buyer behaviors (Navarro, 2018). It also makes it difficult for buyers to obtain goods conveniently because of its lack of integration with modern distribution and communication techniques.
The existence of Samsung’s traditional communication tools, away from the modern digital ecosystem, also gives it a low score in terms of meeting the communication needs of the target market, thereby making it difficult for the company to satisfy its marketing objectives. This evaluation is based on a comparison of the efficacy of Samsung’s traditional marketing strategy with the current needs of millennial smartphone users. Indeed, as alluded to by Short et al. (2020) and Arora and Agarwal (2019), this group of customers is often tech-savvy and dynamic. Therefore, based on the findings of the evaluative report above, Samsung’s integrated marketing communication plan is outdated and misaligned with the marketing requirements of young people, who are the prospective target market for its smartphone business. To be more appealing to this group of customers, Samsung’s public relations and traditional forms of advertising, such as radio, television, and print media advertising, need to be replaced with more effective options of communication. In other words, the current marketing strategies currently implemented at the South Korean-based organization are ineffective in appealing to the target audience, thereby making them unsuitable for meeting the company’s marketing objectives.
Building Cross-Functional Relationships
Building cross-functional relationships should be one of Samsung’s most effective strategies for consolidating its overall marketing plan to appeal to Millennials, who are the preferred target market for its smartphone business. This plan demands that different business divisions work in harmony or synchrony with one another to create an ultimate user experience that would appeal to different consumer needs. In line with this vision, it is proposed that Samsung should build its cross-functional relationships by optimizing its digital marketing plan through search engine optimization, adoption of lead enrichment tools, marketing users’ experiences, use of artificial intelligence (AI) for data optimization, and enhancing integration of marketing activities using social media. These plans are consistent with the views of Bolton, Chapman, and Mills (2019), who define these strategies as being effective in creating a wider digital disruptive communication plan targeting young customers. In the context of this study, they could be effective in building cross-functional relationships by at least 15% within Samsung’s internal marketing processes to appeal to young customers.
Conclusion
In this presentation, Samsung’s traditional integrated marketing communication strategies have emerged as being business-centric and ineffective in meeting the needs of Millennial customers. Consequently, proposals have been cited for making them customer-centric by relying on updated digital marketing tools, such as social media, to bridge the divide between current and future marketing needs. This marketing platform would best suit the needs of millennial buyers, who are the target demographic for its smartphone business. The plan should complement the development of cross-functional relationship-building across business divisions and be evaluated periodically to make sure that the original objectives are being met.
Reference List
Arora, T. and Agarwal, B. (2019) ‘Empirical study on perceived value and attitude of millennials towards social media advertising: a structural equation modelling approach’, Vision, 23(1), pp. 56–69.
Bolton, R. N., Chapman, R. G. and Mills, A. J. (2019) ‘Harnessing digital disruption with marketing simulations’, Journal of Marketing Education, 41(1), pp. 15–31.
Jeyasekar, J. and Saravanan, P. (2019) Innovations in the designing and marketing of information services. London: IGI Global.
Navarro, R. (2018) Marketing with purpose: a C-suite guide to being truly customer-centric. New York, NY: Ric Navarro.
Ross, S. M. (2019) ‘Slack it to me: complementing LMS with student-centric communications for the millennial/post-millennial student’, Journal of Marketing Education, 41(2), pp. 91–108.
Short, N. et al. (2020) ‘Mobile technology and cumulative trauma symptomology among millennials’, Hand Therapy, 25(1), pp. 11–17.
Statista. (2021) Samsung’s share of global smartphone shipments from 2nd quarter 2009 to 2nd quarter 2021. Web.