Corporate Social Responsibility Marketing Strategy

Question: Discuss about the Corporate Social Responsibility Marketing Strategy. Answer: Introduction: Samsung is a global brand and it is known for its unique and innovative products. The company has invested a lot to develop a core team of research and development. As specified in the case study, Samsung has won several awards and accolades at international level for its innovative products (Whittington, 2007). In the case study, authors mentioned that one of the key competencies of Samsung is the design component. It is important to mention that design is not only about the aesthetics of the product. The product design is concerned with user experience, product efficiency, and much more. The good thing for Samsung is that it has been able to focus on innovative product design with effective cost strategy (Menzel, 2013). Samsung charges premium for its unique products. However, the pricing strategy of Samsung is less aggressive as compared to the pricing strategy of its competitors like Apple. Typically the organizations use one of the two key strategic management approaches. These are product differentiation strategy or cost leadership strategy. Samsung has focus on product differentiation as well as cost leadership. Samsung has been using cost leadership strategy to achieve global competitive advantage. It is expected that the company would continue to use the cost leadership strategy to attract new consumers. The management of Samsung also realizes that it cannot have a same or common strategy for different markets across the world. For example, the consumer behavior of consumers in Europe is not the same as the consumer behavior of consumers in Australia (Whittington, 2001). This is the reason that Samsung has different strategic management approaches for different markets. For the developed economies like Australia, Samsung focuses more on product differentiation as compared to cost leadership and the for the developing and emerging markets like India, Samsung focuses more on cost leadership strategy as compared to product differentiation. The management of Samsung realizes that it must obtain a balance between the cost leadership strategies and product differentiation strategies. It would be correct to say that Samsung has been successful in its strategic management approaches. The company has its presence in almost every part of the world. Samsung has a huge customer base and it also has a set of loyal customers that would not switch. The loyal customer base of Samsung also acts as the advocates of the company that spreads the word about the company through word of the mouth marketing. For Samsung, design of the products is an important element of core competency. The company also believes that its employees are the biggest strength and it is expected that employees would continue to come up with new ideas and innovation to take the company forward. Samsungs strategy as defined by Richard Whittington It would be correct to say that that strategic planning is taking away all the noise that might hinder the progress towards the agreed vision for the business. This allow for the goal to be narrowed down and doable. Every person knows what they are to do in order to contribute towards their success and that of the business. The major elements of strategic planning, the outlining of steps for attaining their strategic goals, include setting goals based of the companys mission/vision statement, developing an action plan clearly defining the objectives, tracking the performance and use of tools to achieve desired goals and the ability to review the results and have the ability make changes as the company may need to stay on track in achieving its goals (Daft, 2013). There are several elements of strategic planning for Samsung. Multiple factors contribute to what approach would, be best for that organization, such as size industry, culture, and type of workforce and management style. The major elements for strategic planning are Vision, statement, Goals, Values, Implementation strategy, Communication strategy, and planning teams. Richard Whittington, taking a Western viewpoint, has collated several theories about strategy from the past five decades and categorized them into four groups by placing certain approaches into certain decades starting in the early 1960s. The four perspectives on strategy, as defined by Richard Whittington, can be discussed as: It appears that Samsung has been following the combination of classic and systemic strategy. The basic tenets of classic theory and systemic theory could be observed in the strategic management approach of Samsung. The presence of classic and systemic approach of theories is evident in the strategic management approach of Samsung. Whittington placed the prevailing approaches to strategy, Chandler, Ansoff, Sloan and Porter, into the classical category and the systemic category, where he assigned Granovetter and Whitley. The management of Samsung believes that Strategic planning is essential in the business world if the goal is to be successful (Daft, 2013). There are some business models, which have adopted the fly by the seat of your pants model, but those are typical short-lived adventures. Strategic planning has at its core the realization that many factors will affect the likelihood and magnitude of success. Different scholars and leaders have labeled the elements of strategic planning with different names or stages but they are essentially the same (Jung, 2014). The management of Samsung also realizes the challenges of strategic planning. Strategic planning challenges in larger companies are: communication among multiple divisions assuring that all key stakeholders have been able to provide input, assessing the opportunity to grow with the risk of growth versus the risk of standing still, and the ability to make changes and adjust without sacrifice the mission of vision of the organization. The re are many challenges with strategic planning with all companies. Large companies are faced with many unique challenges. The larger the company directly correlates with the likelihood of a higher risk profile. The root of the risk exposure can stem from: personnel diversity, portfolio diversity, and state, national and or international geographic distribution as well as legal statutes. At a core level, the ever-present challenge is respecting and upholding the mission and values of the company. Hadjikhani, Lee Park (2016) argued that a big part of strategic planning is strategic execution. Authors tells us that 24% of businesses fail in successful strategy execution (p. 15). He bases success on commitment from senior management as well as four other steps. The first step is to be competitive in your strategy. Samsung has done this with a clear destination or vision statement. The second step is to measure the strategy or the financials to see if company is making the targets. The third is to communicate often, and the fourth is to engage others and be committed (Scholten Trott, 2015). The execution of strategic planning for two of the highlighted theories of Whittington (Classic and Systemic) can be highlighted as below: After reviewing strategic planning and the case study of Samsung Electronics: Success by Design, some major challenges of strategic planning for large complex organizations as well as leaders could include changing business needs, changes in product advancement, employee issues and changes within the industry. Since strategic planning usually looks at a 3 to 5 year forecast, it can cause a lot of room for a need of change and therefore the strategic planning can maintaining a fluidity to it, which can pose challenges to leaders (Baloh, Uthicke Moon, 2008). With Samsung Electronics being as big and popular as they are it is very important that they make changes that will be accepted by everyone. It is imperative that they plan appropriately because changes made could easily affect a race or religion. It is recommended that larger organizations like Samsung should be broken down for each level within the organization give the manager and employee's to discuss and present their ideas o n what will work for their area within the company. It is expected that Samsung would continue to use the two strategies blocks of Whittington. The industry of technology product is very competitive industry. It is expected that the competition would further increase in this industry (Petersen, Mozota Kim, 2015). Therefore, it is important that the management of Samsung should be considerate about its strategic management approaches. It is also important that Samsung should include various internal and external stakeholders for strategic planning. It is also important that the stakeholders at various levels within the organizations should be involved for effective strategic execution as the strategic execution would not be successful without the support of employees. 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