Most Connected Brands – Samsung (6th)
Another bite of Apple
Samsung has dropped slightly in the 2020 Most Connected Brands UK ranking to sixth, two places lower than 2019. However, encouragingly for the brand they remain just ahead of Apple, their key smartphone rival, who is in seventh place.
Despite continuing to hold a solid position inside the Top 10 by maintaining or improving their position in most metrics, they have experienced some key losses. Their score for Emotion, which plays an important role in the technology sector, has dropped from sixth place to ninth. They have also fallen four places from eighth to 12th for the metrics “meets need” and “satisfaction” and falling five places in the “use again” category from 15th to 20th.
This has been a hard year for Samsung, starting with having to delay the launch of their folding phone, the Samsung Galaxy Fold, from April to September due to issues with the new screen technology. Then in December an update to software on many Samsung smart TVs meant that customers were not able to access BBC iPlayer over the Christmas period. These events could explain why consumers who associate Samsung with anger and disgust feel these emotions strongly.
Yet whilst Samsung has embraced innovative technology such as the Fold, they are still falling behind their smartphone competitors when it comes to being seen to push boundaries, where a third of consumers associated this with them, compared to 56% for Apple and 50% for Huawei. If we look at consumer confidence in their products in relation to their TV competitors, Samsung falls in a close second, with 58% of consumers thinking of Sony as a brand that offers great products and services, and 56% saying the same for Samsung. While less than half (44%) said this for Panasonic.
Even with these setbacks Samsung has jumped up dramatically in the rankings for social responsibility from 35th place in 2019 to 17th in 2020. Social responsibility is something that all technology companies battle with, plagued by their products requiring the use of diminishing minerals from questionable sources, and single use plastic components in their products. Samsung have tried to combat their environmental footprint where they can, with a pledge that the packaging used for their products and accessories, will be replaced with environmentally sustainable materials like recycled/bio-based plastics and paper.
More recently Samsung has announced that they are going to introduce new packaging to its TV range that will allow customers to be able to easily transform TV packaging boxes into other items such as magazine racks or even small houses for cats. It is perhaps moves like this and the Fold that is why consumers associate Samsung with the emotion ‘surprise’ more than its competitors.
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