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Follow UsChief marketing officer Gregory Lee talks about Samsung’s journey from a low-cost manufacturer to a premium global brand, which is a global leader in many categories
At the IAA World Congress held in Dubai, Gregory Lee, chief marketing officer, Samsung Electronics, said the list of global brands includes names such as Olympics or even Dubai.
Lee said, “Everybody recognises the Olympics logo and, all these years, it has been a sign of human competition, triumph and fair play, which makes a global brand. And Samsung’s association with the Olympics has made it a global brand, too.”
Disclosing his global sales figures, Lee said Samsung, which reached sales of US$ 25.2 billion in 2001, more than doubled that figure in 2005 to US$ 55.4 billion.
Almost 60 per cent of this business has come from Asia, including 18 per cent from Korea alone. Another 15 per cent comes from the Americas and 24 per cent from Europe.
Africa, where Samsung is now planning to extend its network, contributes about 1 per cent of its global sales. As Lee said, “We are trying to reach consumers in almost every country of Africa and hopeful that, on an average, these countries will deliver business of at least US$ 100 million each.”
Lee asserted that over the years, Samsung has emerged from being a follower of the market leader to actual market leader in many sectors. The company plans to retain a market share of 18.4 per cent globally in the CDMS mobile phone business. Its share in the TV segment is around 9.2 per cent, and in the monitor business, 14.3 per cent globally.
Samsung’s highest share is in the computer related parts and accessories segment – around 56.8 per cent in the NAND flash segment. Plus, it has a share of 34 per cent and 32.1 per cent in the SRAM and DRAM categories, respectively.
Lee said, “We have leveraged the technological change from analogue to digital very effectively.”
He revealed that ‘Time’ magazine, which had positioned Samsung as a mass marketer of cheap televisions and VCRS in the 1990s, had declared it to be an innovative company in 2001.
Lee added that Samsung has moved from being quantity oriented to being quality oriented.
In 1996, Samsung decided to change its image from a low-cost brand to a premium brand, and the company has grown exponentially since then.
In fact, there was a time when in the race to become a global brand, Samsung started advertising on airport carts. As a result, when the company did some research on consumers and their perspective on the brand, most of them thought Samsung to be a company that manufactured airport carts.
According to Lee, any brand, which has a large global presence and the ability to affect consumer behaviour globally and consistently trades around the globe, is a global brand. Samsung fulfils all these criteria, he felt.
When agencyfaqs! confronted Lee about how Samsung had already missed out on the mobile phone market in India, which is now being ruled by Nokia, he agreed and said, “We are thinking very hard about it, but I can’t reveal any further strategy on this. We have a long-term vision for the Indian market, but it is still a challenge for us and, probably, I can talk about it in a few months from now.”
Answering another query, Lee said that even global brands need to communicate locally, depending on the product category, as the needs of consumers vary in different markets.
He says, “If you were to translate an English book into several local languages, the flavour would vary for each language. That is just as applicable to advertising communication.”
© 2006 agencyfaqs!
