Advertising and Promotion Integrated Marketing Communications

Question: Discuss about the Advertising and Promotion for Integrated Marketing Communications. Answer: Introduction: This report discusses about the Samsungs integrated marketing communication strategies that have been implemented after the battery explosion case of Note 7. The discussion is supported with the analysis of companys communication mix along with the analysis of brand image and awareness. The last part of the report discusses about the recent integrated communication plan of the company. Advertising is the most important part of Samsungs promotion. It is the strategy that is used by this brand for attracting most of its customers. The company uses color schemes in its advertisements in order to attract the customers (Kitchen and Burgmann, 2010). At the time of advertising Samsung galaxy S, the company has used different slogans such as Dont contain yourself. Sales promotion involves the strategies that deal with adding the values with the products to accelerate the sakes of the products. Samsung is the brand that does not focus on sales promotion as such. Some of the strategies for sales promotion is done like providing gifts at the purchase of the phones at the time of occasion. Public relation can be defined as the process of promoting the products with delivering the messages with the help of third party for example, through magazines, journals, newspaper etc. at the time of releasing Galaxy S, the company has took many initiatives in tis direction. The ads have been posted in magazine about the phone delivering messages related to its features (Yeshin, 2012). The company has also made partnership with Google in order to deliver the message related to this phone on Google. It has also been analyzed that Galaxy S was the phone for that the company has made many efforts in advertising. The ads of this phone can be found anywhere such as in magazines, newspapers etc. (Seno and Lukas, 2007). Direct marketing: It is the method that is used to customize the messages for the customers according to their choices (Hackley, 2010). This method helps in making the customer feel important. Samsung uses this strategy to mail the customers whose data is there in the database of the company. The company sends the mails to the target customers who can be converted into buyers easily. The condition in this marketing is that, the company should acquire the data about the customers from different sources. Personal selling can be defined as the process that is required to sell the products personally by the sales executive (Keller, Parameswaran and Jacob, 2011). Samsung is not at all in such activities of personal selling as it is considered as very traditional method of promotion and communication. Samsung do not have its stores that sell only Samsung products but depends on its retailers and distributors to sell its products. Brand image of the company can be defined as how the brand is portrayed in front of the company. It involves various characteristics such as perceived quality, the loyalty of the customers, and association with the brands as well as the awareness of the brand (Ogba and Tan, 2009). Brand awareness is the major part of this section and it is defined as the process of creating awareness about the brand sin the market. Brand awareness analysis provides the idea that how much the customers are well aware and have the idea about the existence of the brand. Brand equity means creating the value of the brands among the customers. The customers based brand equity can be determine by the framework that includes, brand loyalty, brand association. perceived quality and brand awareness which can further be analyzed by using brand awareness pyramid. The above diagram shows the customers based brand equity framework that needs to be analyzed in order to identify the brand image and the equity of the brand in terms of customer views. Brand association: brand association is termed as the qualities that are associated with the brands (Aaker, 2009). Samsung is the brand that is considered as the brand with range of products and associated with many qualities. The above figure clearly mentions the association of the brand. The major association is the services and wide ranges, it has been analyzed that this company has the fastest service and provides the service to the customers without any delay (Amini, Darani, Afshani and Amini, 2012). Other association is availability of the wide range of products. The company offers different products in different price range so it does not consider as the brand of premium customers unlike Apple which is considered as a very high class brand. Samsung is the brand for all but still act as status symbol in terms of some of its products such as Samsung edge smartphone. After analyzing the data, it has been identified that the customers of Samsung has moderate retention rate. This means that it may be possible that they switch to some other brand in case if they get better offers. 58% retention rate of the customers of Samsung suggests that most of the people among the buyer of Samsung sticks to the brand but some of them may switch the brand according to the situation. Perceived quality: Perceived quality from customers perspective is about how customers perceive the quality of the products or how the company makes the efforts to position themselves in the minds of the customers in terms of quality (Hwang, Cho and Kim, 2010). As far as the quality of Samsung is considered, the customers have the image that the product as effective quality that can be relied upon as compared to other brands such as HTC and Nokia. Brand awareness: Brand awareness of the company can determine by the intensity off recall. It is determined by whether the customers recall they logo of the brand at the time when they heard about the products. Samsung is the brand which has moderate brand awareness as when the name smartphone is heard by any of the customers, there are lot more brands other than Samsung that can be recalled by the customers. Keller has given the pyramid model to analyze the brand equity and awareness of the brand. Below is the description of pyramid model for Samsung: Salience: It is the level that describes the question Who are we? from the perspective of customers. It explains that what the perceptions of the customers are when they hear about Samsung. Customers have the perception that Samsung is the brands that have wide range of products with high capability of android technology. Performance and Imagery: This is the second level that is divided into performance and imagery. Performance is about customer service and satisfaction (Magnusson, Westjohn and Zdravkovic, 2011). The customers are satisfied with the image of young style and fun brand. Imagery is the element that describes how the customers needs are met. Customers needs are met with the brands stylish designs and technology. Judgment and feeling: Judgment describes hat this brand has high level of excitement and fun with low level of self-respect as there are wide range of products available. Feeling suggests that the people have high credibility on the brands. Resonance: Resonance is about loyalty. The customers have moderate level of repeated purchase but low level of personal attachment with the brand. Brand meaning: Brand meaning for Samsung is its image I the minds of the customers. As far as the brand meaning for Samsung is considered, it has been analyzed that Samsung aims to project itself as the brand for all and the brand that serves wide variety of products to the customers (Rice and Atkin, 2012). Samsung is the brand from low price to high price models so that it can cover the large customers base as compared to the brand that sell the products to the premium customers only such as Apple.it is the brand with value for money and high effectiveness and awareness. The company is very well known in the world and when the customers head about the smartphones or nay electronic gadget, the company thinks of Samsung as quality brand. IMC strategies of Samsung for brand enhancement: The company has used different tradition tool such as television and newspapers to call off the sales of Note 7 after facing the tragedy of battery explosion (Yeshin, 2012). As the company needs to enhance its brands so some of the integrated marketing approaches has been used by the company: TV ads: The Company has focused on releasing TV ads that provides an overview of the case as well as the safety measures that have been implemented at the time of releasing the new phone that is Samsung Galaxy S8 (Aaker, Kumar and Day, 2008). The ad on television shoes an ostrich that tries to fly and succeeded. This ad shows that Samsung also wants to fly again in the market. Campaigning: the company has focused upon marketing campaigns that are the people about the battery explosion case and also about the safety measures introduced. The new scheme of replacing the note phones has also been launched to gain the trust of the customers back. Conclusion: This report concludes that Samsung is the company that provides wide range of products to the customers. This is the company that is considered to be the company with products that are fun and technological updated. 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