With 250 Retail Stores in India, OPPO is Creating a Unique Customer Experience Zone

 

Image source: OPPO

The last five years have seen a revolution of sorts in the Indian smartphone retail space.

Between 2012 and 2016, it seemed that the era of offline stores might just come to an end in the smartphone industry.

At that time, the younger customers had stopped going to offline stores to purchase smartphones.

Everyone in the 18-45 age brackets was buying smartphones from Amazon, Flipkart, and other online stores.

Many smartphone manufacturers had exclusively started selling from online sites, clearly shunning offline retail stores.

That’s the reason I was really surprised when I noticed an MNC brand like OPPO focusing on opening retail stores.

When OPPO started selling its mobile phones from offline retail stores back in 2016, it seemed against the grain.

But, the experience of the last five years shows that OPPO was right in investing in the offline channel,

as the brand has 250 branded retail stores across India, which provides a unique experience to the customers.

A NatGeo documentary talks about OPPO’s retail stores in India

Interestingly, I learnt about the full scale of OPPO’s offline presence while watching a NatGeo documentary called ‘Superfactories.’The documentary showed that OPPO has more than 60,000 points of sale in India,

which includes 250 exclusive retail stores that provide smartphone enthusiasts every bit of information they need about OPPO’s mobile phones.

But, before we go any further, let’s understand why a brand like OPPO has decided to have such a vast network of exclusive retail stores.

The main reason is it helps the brand provide a unique experience zone to customers, where they can buy any OPPO phone they wish.

Compared to this, a multi-brand store may or may not keep all phones of OPPO. Typically, multi-brand stores only keep popular phones of a brand.

Therefore, customers need exclusive retail stores, where they get a lot more variety to buy from.

I’ve been to OPPO’s exclusive stores in Delhi, where I noticed that they keep affordable phones like ‘A Series’ and also premium smartphones like ‘Find X Series.’

Such stores have phones for those who want to spend less than Rs 20,000 and also for those who can afford to spend Rs 50,000 or above.

Moreover, their staff is trained to explain all the product features to the customers.

One can’t ignore that most consumers need to speak to a person face-to-face to understand smartphone features.

For such a vast segment of customers, OPPO’s retail stores are a great place to buy a smartphone.

At OPPO mobile showrooms, you’d see customers across all age groups and income brackets.

OPPO has created a nation-wide presence through its branded retail stores

The network of 250 retail stores by OPPO is spread across the length and breadth of India.

The brand has stores in metro cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Tier-2 & 3 cities in states like Chhattisgarh and Orissa.

Clearly, OPPO’s objective is to target consumer’s pan-India and not just limit itself to urban centres.

To complement its retail presence, OPPO has also invested in after-sales service.

Recently, OPPO was ranked as Number 1 in customer satisfaction for after-sales.

In a research conducted, waiting time for repair was lowest for OPPO customers,

as around half of the respondents said that they attended the brand’s service centre within 15 minutes.

Isn’t it incredible?

In case you really want a detailed look intoOPPO’s Greater Noida manufacturing facility, Hyderabad R&D Centerand other Make-in-India initiatives by OPPO, do watch the NatGeo documentary, SUPERFACTORIES.