5.- Discuss the Samsung brand itself and compare with Sony or any other brand you think it is the major competitor for Samsung.

Samsung is an electronics company, who today hold the premier brand reputation in electronics. Today, you see top-of-the-line smart phones and TVs that showcase all the technological advancements Samsung has gone through. Between 2000 and 2005, Samsung’s brand equity had grown by 186 percent, the second-biggest gain in value right behind Google. At this time Samsung had finally beaten Sony, their biggest competitors. The story about how Samsung came all the way to the top started in 1993, when their Chairman at the time Lee Kun Hee visited the United States and saw for himself that Sony had overshadowed them. Since then Samsung made design and innovation their main priority. However, their key to success is the understanding of the user interface. The looks, ease of use, and useful features are the keys Samsung used to build its brand reputation. However, the ultimate driver of brand reputation is a quality product development process. In the late 90s Samsung had hired hundreds of young designers to lead their product development, and a few years later it would all pay off. Their quest for improvement is so ferocious that Samsung cut average product development time from 14 months to 5 months. Samsung changes its product lines every nine months, compared to other brands such as Motorola and Nokia who take 12 to 18 months. Samsung can have their next generation of a product on the market months before the competition has its last generation of products out. The strive for change is huge at Samsung, thanks to this Samsung has lower manufacturing costs, quicker time to market, and an industry-leading profit margin of 21 percent. Samsung stock has increased in value tenfold since 2000 and Samsung’s brand is now worth more than Sony and