ABOUT ONEPLUS

OnePlus is a Chinese brand based in Shenzhen, is a smartphone manufacturer. It

was founded by Pete Lau (CEO) and Carl Pei in December 2013. They have
released numerous phones, amongst other products like headphones, Power &
cables (Mobiles). The company's aim is to design a smartphone that would give
user high-end quality with a lower price than other phones in its class (Premium
Segment). OnePlus India launched its first mobile handset, the OnePlus One, on
23 April 2014, in India exclusively through Amazon, OnePlus also announced
its plans to establish a presence through physical stores (Brick & Mortar), with
plans to have 25 official walk-in service centres across India. The company
officially serves 38 countries and regions around the world as of countries
present on its website. One Plus mobiles are among few cell phone
manufacturers which is positioning its brand very high in the mind of
consumers.
The brand-new Chinese company, OnePlus broke way into the smartphone
market just seven years ago with a “flagship killer” smartphone. The company
managed to sell over 500,000 smartphones within the first year of its operation,
with potential to grow considerably more. Now adjusted and equipped to the
smartphone market, OnePlus aims at targeting their latest smartphone device,
the OnePlus 2 to the U.S. smartphone consumer. After careful research and
deliberation, it has been suggested that OnePlus do so by upscale from indirect
exporting to forming a strategic alliance with a U.S. company to yield the
highest success in expanding business westward. The U.S. provides numerous.
opportunities for OnePlus to capitalize on. Such opportunities include a large
consumer base with above average disposable incomes, a rapidly growing
market with high potential, and consumer favourability in an Android operating
system as well as functionality over design.
Forming a strategic alliance with the U.S. telecommunications company, AT&T
will also prove to be an opportunity for OnePlus, yet comes with a set of risks
and challenges as well. However, a strategic alliance will come with a heavy
price tag, and distribution matters will have to be revamped. Further risks stem
from the level of the consumer. OnePlus must be prepared to compensate for
relying solely on e-commerce in selling their product. E- commerce limits the
amount of customer interaction opportunities the company could greatly benefit
from. It also reduces the level of satisfaction and loyalty the consumer will have
towards the product.

OnePlus Is the Best Smartphone Brand in Premium

Segment
Regardless of what people say and how many bugs there were in the OxygenOS
builds, OnePlus has remained the top choice of Indian consumers when it comes
to the premium segment. According to a Counterpoint Research report, OnePlus
is the number one smartphone brand in the above Rs 30,000 category in India.
The Chinese smartphone maker saw great success with the launch of the
OnePlus 9R. The OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro became the best selling
smartphones in the ultra-premium segment (above Rs 45,000). The OnePlus 9R
garnered 25% of the market share in the premium category of smartphones
(above Rs 30,000). This tells us one thing, regardless of what it is, Indians love
holding a OnePlus smartphone in their hand. Even the tech enthusiasts who
have said that OnePlus hasn’t been at the top of its game recently know that the
superiority of the OxygenOS over the other operating systems.
Even though both Xiaomi and Samsung have smartphones in the same range,
they are nowhere near OnePlus. For OnePlus, the second quarter of CY2021 has
resulted in 200% growth when compared with the previous year’s same quarter.
So there’s obviously no ruling OnePlus out of the Indian market for a long time
now.

OnePlus pricing
: Penetration Pricing
The strategy of pricing the phone at an affordable low
price was used by OnePlus because they did not aim to have high margins of
profit by selling the phone. According to Peter Lau, the company sold the
OnePlus One at cost and also it is to be noted that OnePlus didn’t spend money.
on advertising at that time instead they sold phone online using community
partners and online marketing. Initially, they wanted a high market penetration,
for which they used invite-only as well as online community members for
selling. OnePlus used penetration pricing strategy as it intended to price the
smartphone to make it very attractive to consumers, to get them to buy their
phone. This was a fruitful marketing strategy because OnePlus was a new start-
up company, and OnePlus One was their first smartphone. One plus offered
devices with an industry leading design, superior build quality, and top-of the
line specifications at a disruptive price. The phones’ pricing appealed to those
seeking a high-end device without having to spend too much on it. According to
some industry observers, one plus kept its pricing strategy very competitive and
was not worried about the costs while manufacturing the device. After adding
up all the costs, the start-up retained a small margin for itself to keep its
operations running and passed on the rest of the savings to the costumer in the
form of low prices, they added. One plus set the lowest feasible price for its
device in each geographical market. They priced the smartphone at $299, and
this price point made the smartphone very attractive to a large number of
prospective customers as they were looking to buy a new or upgrade their
current smartphone. This was also the price where people felt that they were not
taking a lot of risk of trying a new phone.

OnePlus One cost $230 in 2013 and OnePlus 7 costs $649 in 2019. They
wanted market share provincially. They started cheap to gain market share. One
Plus One was sold at cost by company founder Pete Lau. They sold online
through communities and marketing without advertising. They used penetration
pricing to attract consumers by making quality phones affordable. They
benefited from this. OnePlus One's price point was perfect to avoid customers
thinking it was a cheap phone and make them feel like they weren't taking a big
risk by trying out a new phone brand. OnePlus's pricing could be seen as
moving from cost-based to value-based. Cost-based pricing adds a profit to the
product's per-unit manufacturing cost. Their cost-based pricing model started
with top-of-the-line specs and features at half the price of comparable models
from competitors. They initially controlled costs like anyone else.

Sales only through their own showrooms or online to avoid retailer fees. Oppo's
parent company helped absorb many fixed costs. Margin were thin. Over time,
they adopted value-based pricing. Value-based pricing considers customers'
opinions of the product. Customer perception of the company drives everything.
Value-based pricing immediately conjures up Apple. They price their brand, not
their product, after decades of branding. Value-based pricing is their specialty
thanks to all that brand marketing and advertising money. Over time, OnePlus
has attempted the same. Numbers show success. The figure compares OnePlus
and Samsung Galaxy phone price growth over time. OnePlus One was 65%
cheaper than Samsung Galaxy S5, and OnePlus 6 is 26% cheaper than Galaxy
S9. 15 They built their brand, stopped focusing on parts cost, and started
focusing on performance. Consumers loved all of these. Amazon became their
partner. They are one of India's top three premium handset brands, and Nielsen
has named it Amazon's highest-rated smartphone. OnePlus is successful in
India. The company was right to realise that in a developing nation, people want
the best RAM, camera, and design features. As mentioned at the start of the
analysis, smartphone trends and opportunities are even better in developing
nations. One Plus eventually offered the best, which improved consumers' brand
perception. This moved them from cost-based to value-based pricing. OnePlus
One cost $230 in 2013 and OnePlus 7 costs $649 in 2019. They wanted market
share provincially. They started cheap to gain market share. One Plus One was
sold at cost by company founder Pete Lau. They sold online through
communities and marketing without advertising. They used penetration pricing
to attract consumers by making quality phones affordable. They benefited from
this. OnePlus One's price point was perfect to avoid customers thinking it was a
cheap phone and make them feel like they weren't taking a big risk by trying out
a new phone brand. OnePlus's pricing could be seen as moving from cost-based
to value-based. Cost-based pricing adds a profit to the product's per-unit
manufacturing cost. Their cost-based pricing model started with top-of-the-line
specs and features at half the price of comparable models from competitors.
They initially controlled costs like anyone else.

Sales only through their own showrooms or online to avoid retailer fees. Oppo's
parent company helped absorb many fixed costs. Margin were thin. Over time,
they adopted value-based pricing. Value-based pricing considers customers'
opinions of the product. Customer perception of the company drives everything.
Value-based pricing immediately conjures up Apple. They price their brand, not
their product, after decades of branding. Value-based pricing is their specialty
thanks to all that brand marketing and advertising money. Over time, OnePlus
has attempted the same. Numbers show success. The figure compares OnePlus
and Samsung Galaxy phone price growth over time. OnePlus One was 65%
cheaper than Samsung Galaxy S5, and OnePlus 6 is 26% cheaper than Galaxy
S9. 15 They built their brand, stopped focusing on parts cost, and started
focusing on performance. Consumers loved all of these. Amazon became their
partner. They are one of India's top three premium handset brands, and Nielsen
has named it Amazon's highest-rated smartphone. OnePlus is successful in
India. The company was right to realise that in a developing nation, people want
the best RAM, camera, and design features. As mentioned at the start of the
analysis, smartphone trends and opportunities are even better in developing
nations. One Plus eventually offered the best, which improved consumers' brand
perception. This moved them from cost-based to value-based pricing.
MARKETING STRATEGIES USED BY ONE PLUS
One Plus Marketing Strategies

1. Creating Buzz with Exclusivity

When the phone was just launched in India, OnePlus created a scarce situation
whereby not everyone could buy the phone even though the market was getting
a sense of the phone and was liking it.
In this strategy of exclusivity that was implemented by OnePlus, you could have
got the phone only if one of the users of OnePlus gave you an invite.
Since the phones were not readily available and one could only get it basis the
invite, the option of choice was ruled out. That is, you don’t walk into a phone
shop and see OnePlus phones as one of the products to choose from.
If you want it, you practically strive to get it.
Consequently, the company had no reason to establish retail stores or own any
warehouses filled with unsold phones. The supply was there to adequately meet
the demand. OnePlus developed a cult following using this strategy. To
determine the effectiveness of this strategy, you should check how there was a
boom in their site’s traffic when people were allowed to order the phones
without having any invite during Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.

Clever Use Of Influencer Marketing

OnePlus uses another impressive strategy that demands banking on the impact
of other brands or personalities that raise awareness and draw the attention of
customers. In its recent collaboration with Netflix India. OnePlus India was the
first to release the first look of the much-awaited Sacred Games season 2 in
2019 this marketing program drove a lot of visits to their social media pages
even from the passionate followers of the series. OnePlus not only used the
influence of Netflix, but also makes partnering with popular actors, models, and
social media influencers.
A Quality Product
A quality product is the best marketing you could ever do. You can just never
understate the importance of the quality of a product when it comes to
marketing strategies. It was very clear that Samsung and Apple are high-end.
phones with very sleek design, hence, trying to beat them by having a cheaper
one would only work if the quality were maintained. And that was one of the
biggest tasks in front of OnePlus. How could they do it?
With a top-notch phone and competitive pricing, which came from the greatly.
reduced marketing costs, OnePlus was able to compete with bigger brands Do a
quick search on Google and you will discover that a lot of the consumers were
beyond satisfied with what OnePlus phones are offering. Here, I grabbed some
of the reviews for you to see.

Leveraging on Word of Mouth

Before OnePlus entered the Indian market,it had already created an active
community where discussions about phone were taking place. This gave
OnePlus the necessary initial traction.
After the launch, OnePlus introduced its product to this community and they
liked it. Guess what? The first users of this product started spreading the gospel
about it and telling everyone about the phone.
Besides this, OnePlus made it more fun for them when it made them eligible to
invite other people to buy the phone, which, as I mentioned, was the only way
to buy the phone back then.
As more people got their hands on these phones and got satisfied with what they
bought, each person became an endorser for the brand and for the quality
product that it sold.

Geographic Segmentation
Demographic Segmentation
Psychographic Segmentation
Benefit Segmentation
Geographic Segmentation

OnePlus has divided the markets regionally, this helped in understanding the
different needs and wants of different regions separately. Thus aiding in
developing appropriate market strategies which are not ill-suited for a selected
region, consequently saving the company a lot of time and money which could
have been spend unwantedly (Markgraf). Even though a start-up company, their
regional approach helped them to achieve the trust and admiration of the local
people. Several channels were opened in a systematic manner for customers to
pre-order their smartphone. And only eighteen different countries were
preselected for OnePlus One launch initially

Demographic Segmentation
The next major segmentation under which the markets are divided are on the
basis of demographic variables such as Age, Sex, Occupation, family cycles etc.
The most salient feature of demographic segmentation is the massive
availability of data easily available and the ease at which it can be analysed
(Gilligan, 2009). OnePlus is determined not to categorise their potential users
according to demographic variables, nevertheless, they have targeted all users
who are so particular about their products needs to be made out of high quality
material and want the best specification in their smartphone.

Psychographic Segmentation
Even though similar to Demographics, Psychographic segmentation divided the
user base according to their lifestyle and values (RESTREPO, 2003). OnePlus
segregates and targets those people whose lifestyles are more revolving around
technology, to be more specific android geeks and nerds. Their first product,
OnePlus ONE, was Cyanogen certified meaning the software (Android OS) was
highly customizable to improve its performance Again, built on Android OS,
integrated with all the high-end specifications, OnePlus ONE was launched with
the slogan “flagship killer” shook competitors re-think their strategies
competitive pricing and high specifications, matching or in some cases even
beating other branded smartphones, everyone was clamouring for a piece of
OnePlus ONE

Segmentation

And lastly, benefit segmentation, where market is divided in terms of benefits,

needs and values a customer expects from their products. OnePlus offered
customers the best value for money product. Customers benefited from high end
specifications, build quality, ergonomics and even a better looking phone.
Introduction of CyanogenMod 11 in OnePlus ONE also aided in satisfying
customers who needed a smartphone which can be customized according to
their preferences.

Targeting Strategy:
Success of a company greatly rely on the ability to identify their target markets
i.e. to find where the company’s potential customers lies in the segmentation
analysis Some of the key strategic points of OnePlus Company were not to
compete with the already established smartphone leaders, only manufacture
limited number of products to create demand in the market, manufacture a
phone for the android phone fanatics, and sell the product at a very unprincipled
price creating a wave of ‘wow’ among technology enthusiasts
The target market of OnePlus lies within the limit of 14 to 35 years of age,
off course based on their ability to buy the company’s products. It also
encompasses those tech fanatics and Android lovers who likes to adopt it as
soon as they are launched in the market. Teenagers, lying between the age of 14
and 25 years are considered to appreciate technology is one of the company’s
target markets. These age groups utilise their smartphone for socialising needs,
and are expected to use applications such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc.
Moving to the age group of 26 to 35 years, due to their capability in buying
OnePlus products, forms the biggest segment of OnePlus’ target market. These
age group use their smartphone as a daily driver for making phone calls, send
emails, Text Messaging, music, GPS for navigation and expect the battery to
last till they call it a day)

Positioning Strategy:
In the last stage of the Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning (STP) market.
model, the company needs to decide where they need to position themselves in
the market to stand aside uniquely to focus on their target customers.
Positioning can help in creating a brand image in the minds of the target
audiences and can only be argued in the execution of what differentiates it from
other brands existing in the same market OnePlus identified two unique
marketing plans based on which they positioned the company on the perceptual
map, these attributes were Low.
Pricing and High Specifications. position of OnePlus among all the other major
companies in the perceptual mapping.

Perceptual Mapping shows Positioning Strategy of OnePlus

One could easily notice that OnePlus stands apart from rest of the major
companies. This makes it easier for a target user to certainly pick the product.
without thinking twice. It will be hard to predict at an early stage if the company
moves away from the current positioning paradigm and invite-only strategy,
whether or not users still be wanting to buy products launched by OnePlus. We
could observe that OnePlus market strategists effectively used the
Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning (STP) market model to analyse the
market, identify their potential customers and positioning strategically to
differentiate from other players thereby creating a brand value within the users
mind. OnePlus’ major success was fuelled by their market strategy of creating
demand and publicity as one of the phones which all cannot have due to their
limited availability The system worked on an Invite-only option, i.e., only an
already existing owner of a OnePlus One smartphone can send one invite to
another potential customer. Secondly, the pricing was done perfectly to target
both the age groups (teenagers and adults) without sacrificing on the quality
of the product. Lastly, the smartphone was targeted towards all technology
enthusiasts, United States is OnePlus Ones’ biggest market followed by India.
To conclude this report, from the line a start-up company like OnePlus, with no
brand value, effortlessly became one of the top ranked smartphone companies in
the world, one could recognize the significance of market analysis that could
break all records and how it can help in exploiting all the hidden opportunities
lying within an existing market itself.

Findings

 OnePlus already has India as its biggest market while it keeps expanding
into
other countries. OnePlus offered and continues to offer an extremely good
alternative to high end phones at a lower price without compromising the
quality in the process. This, alone, contributed immensely to its success.
 Most start-ups with little or no capital are always scared that they would
remain an underdog because of how big their competitors are. With these
takeaways, I am sure you can now see that you don’t need big money to outsell
your competitors, rather what you need is a big marketing strategy.
OnePlus wants to focus on the premium segment and that is reflecting clearly in
the choices. “As a brand grows, you tend to become growth-oriented and lose
focus of your identity. OnePlus has chosen to stay consistent to its positioning
and identity. Their new OnePlus marketing strategy has changed a lot with
adoption of new methods. “They are exploring new and innovative ideas,
especially on the digital front to add value to their campaigns.
Innovative marketing tech is the way forward for all brands today and OnePlus
is utilising this aspect very well. As a result, creative digital technology is a part
of their strategy for every campaign and it is evident from their recent
executions new and emerging fields like Facebook AR.
 OnePlus lives its tenet of 'Never Settle' and through that also unsettles the
market with its approach. It has made a mark in the premium phones
category and with these tie-ups, it has upped the ante again as they have
the potential to be game changers for the brand as also for the industry.
 Suggestions
 OnePlus has a much smaller roster by comparison. This enables the
company to give more focus to its devices than some of its competitors.
This is a similar strategy as the one adopted by Apple, which also releases
a very small selection of phones each year. Unfortunately, as OnePlus
gets bigger, its roster is also growing. Time will tell if it keeps its roster
manageable or if it becomes another Samsung.
 One of the most contentious topics amongst OnePlus fans is how the
company has raised its pricing over the years. While it’s true that
OnePlus phones are more expensive now than they’ve ever been, the
brand’s overall pricing strategy is still competitive. It’s just not releasing
flagship-tier phones for $300 anymore — as it did in its early years.
 While the days of ultra-cheap yet ultra-powerful OnePlus phones are long
gone and likely never coming back, OnePlus hasn’t completely
abandoned its status as a wallet- friendly brand.

Conclusion

We can conclude that the OnePlus has a strong hold on their fundamentals.
Their strategy, execution and implementation are aligned with the mission,
vision and values of the organization. The process of positioning the brand in
the mind of the customers is well defined. They managed to get a space in the
minds of the consumer and the brand projected out, got positioned. They are
crystal clear in what they want to be and where they want to be in the mind of
customers. we can also conclude that due to their constant efforts and great
marketing strategies. One plus has emerged as the market the market leader in
the premium Smartphone market with 44% of the market share in India.