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Krispy Kreme

Samsung Electronics Company Limited has been cranking up new product development process to develop and launch hundreds of innovations based on the latest technology and beating competitors to the marketplace. They produce premium priced, feature-jammed goods and have been a strong rival for Sony, Nokia, and Panasonic. They target their products towards affluent households with high annual incomes. Samsung's products include TVs, cell phones, digital music players, personal digital assistants (PDAs), DVD players, camcorders, camera phones, and more. In each of these products categories, Samsung offers many models, and they are sometimes the first firm in the industry to launch a given type of product. At other times they closely follow the innovation firm, trying to improve on what the rival offers (a "second-but-better" strategy).
Despite Samsung's success, it will have to determine how to maintain its growth in an industry where stalwarts like Sony, Nokia, Panasonic have faltered. Due to rapidly-changing technology, the consumer electronics industry's product life cycle is extremely short and getting shorter, many companies beside Samsung are falling behind the curve for lack of innovation. Also, According to Exhibit 4, Samsung ranks fourth in the Plasma TVs and Camcorder global market and ranks third in the mobile phones and microwave ovens market. Now each year Samsung is making a loss on these digital appliances, which is becoming a growing concern for Samsung's lead managers. After a careful review of these central issues pertinent to the Samsung Electronics case we recommend three alternatives, diversification to explore new hardware markets, incremental innovative technology for software to restructure the company's sustainable business model and aggressive marketing campaign for the digital appliances to improve the profit margin.
Samsung electronics can diversify to explore new hardware markets by the means of internal development. By diversification,...