F.F.-H. Nah (Ed.): HCIB/HCII 2014, LNCS 8527, pp. 703–710, 2014. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014 UX and Strategic Management: A Case Study of Smartphone (Apple vs. Samsung) and Search Engine (Google vs. Naver) Industry Junho Choi 1 , Byung-Joon Kim 2 , and SuKyung Yoon 1 1 UX Lab., Yonsei University, Seoul, S. Korea junhochoi@yonsei.ac.kr, skyoon24@gmail.com 2 SK Institute of Management & Economics, Seoul, S. Korea spike.ipiegel@gmail.com Abstract. This paper extends the analytic framework of user experience design into the area of strategic management by adopting the VRIO framework. We adopted value-rarity-imitability-organization (VRIO) framework and applied this integrated scheme into the investigating market cases. The first case study is the analysis of competitive advantages of two successful smartphone device makers, Apple (iPhone) and Samsung (Galaxy). UX Values (attractive design, ease of use, diverse applications), Rarity (simplicity, innovative interface, eco- system), Imitability (patent, brand identity), and Organization (UX control tower, role of CXO) are employed to analyze and compare the strategies of those two most successful smartphone makers. In the second case study we compared the UX strategies of Google and Naver in the global and local levels. Through the case studies this paper shows a strong implication that UX can be extended into the corporate resources and capability, and VRIO framework uti- lized for the analysis of competitive advantages for the market leadership. Keywords: User experience design, Strategic management, VRIO framework, Apple, Samsung, Google, Naver. 1 Introduction: VRIO Framework for UX Design Strategy Since the revolutionary success of Apple, the competitive advantage of most ICT products and services in the contemporary market is now gained from the domain of user experience (UX) beyond the functionality and efficiency. Witnessing the market failure of companies who didn’t pay much attention to the user-oriented design, e.g., Nokia, Motorola, RIM(Blackberry), and SONY, there has been, however, a little ef- fort to explore the analytic framework for competitive advantage of UX design in terms of the strategic management. Strategic management seeks analyses and choices to gain competitive advantages (Barney & Hesterly, 2012). That is, the goal of corporate management is the generat- ing the competitive advantages over other companies in the market. It is the strategy that is the process of determining the best solution to achieve the goal. Market leadership, or competitive advantage, is determined by how effectively the company creates more economic values of its products and services than those of