Case Study Of Xiaomi's Sales And Marketing Strategy: Oneplus One

Xiaomi’s Sales & Marketing Strategy

OnePlus One: Xiaomi’s Similar & Potential Competitor OnePlus One is a mobile phone for which the prospective customer needs an invitation for purchasing. Surprisingly, people are willing to buy this China-made phone and are swiping their credit cards. Thus, people are placing orders without ever seeing the phone from a company that is even less than five months old.

OnePlus doesn’t have any commercial on television, or advertisements in magazines, newspapers, etc. Oneplus isn’t even spending on banners placed on websites with frequent visitors. Yet, the phone is popular among Android fans and is a success. These fans are fully familiar with the OnePlus One’s main features for long. This is in contrast

This has been a smart pricing-strategy to offset initial high manufacturing costs. But, this strategy has been made successful only due to selling via e-commerce. E-commerce websites help in removal of the middlemen and eliminating the overheads, which occur in traditional distribution channels.

Oneplus One uses a slightly different approach than Xiaomi in maintaining inventory balance. Since, Oneplus One gives invites directly to customers, who later pass onto their circles, gauging demand is easy. The accurate demand prediction avoids sinking of money into unsold inventory. Similar to Xiaomi, this approach creates desirability through scarcity.

Xiaomi, which runs a run a popular custom ROM has been following such a left-field strategy with cut-throat pricing. OnePlus One can rise similar to Xiaomi, which is now one of the leading smartphone brands in the world. This in spite, that Xiaomi only caters to a selected few markets. In contrast, OnePlus is aiming for the global market from the get go. This is understandable as OnePlus is giving relatively a premium offering.

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It may also come up with its own ecommerce operations & website in India. This would be similar to its China strategy. Xiaomi sold 55,000 units of its flagship Mi3 phone in less than a month. This may be an obvious step looking at the heavy traffic and crashes at Flipkart. Xiaomi is also investing heavily in after-sales service. Xiaomi is achieving this through sales service providers and exclusive service centers. Since, Xiaomi has achieved considerable worldwide success it is aiming to expand. Xiaomi wants its own exclusive stores and large format experience stores, besides multi –brand outlet. Xiaomi wants to set up its own R&D center to build specific software features for Indian customers.

Due to its low pricing strategy and limited supply, Xiaomi is experiencing arbitrage problems. Some customers are buying more than 1 piece per week and selling on other e-commerce