OPPO wins the GenZ vote for its premium, industry-leading innovations: CMR

As per a new CMR ‘Voice of the GenZ’ Survey, a nationwide survey of smartphone consumers in the premium smartphone segment (INR 25,000-INR 50,000 price band), GenZ consumers are going beyond mere smartphone specifications, and looking at smartphones as a “symbol of their lifestyle” (78%), making them feel “powerful and arrived in life” (75%), and offering them “superior experience through the latest tech innovations” (72%).

Increasingly, GenZ consumers are looking for smartphone brands that deliver superior consumer experience, with premium tech innovations that provide more to consumers, at entry-level premium prices, whether it be in terms of camera experience (78%), battery life (75%), and smartphone design (72%).

OPPO (78%), Samsung (74%), and Apple (71%) are the top three preferred brands noted for their innovation edge and find favor with consumers.

“Smartphone brands that provide a compelling consumer experience, backed by industry-leading innovations, and a premium experience at good price-points, will find favor with demanding consumers. The GenZ clearly identifies with OPPO as an innovation trailblazer, that offers premium experience to them, with industry-leading innovations, whether it be in camera or battery charging,” said Prabhu Ram, Head- Industry Intelligence Group, CMR.

When probed further on their brand preferences, GenZ consumers pointed to OPPO’s camera prowess, and features such as camera innovations, and long-life battery innovations and fast-charging.

Smartphone majors spend heavily on marketing to garner consumer attention and secure market, whether it be through sponsoring large-format events, or getting celebrity endorsements, or advertising on online and offline media. The Survey focused on analyzing the return on investment (RoI) of the marketing spend of smartphone majors, and probed consumers on their recall of various smartphone brands. As per the survey results, 80% of those surveyed spontaneously recalled OPPO, and closely followed by Vivo with 75% pointing to it.

“In a hyper-competitive market like India, marketing is key to gain mindshare amongst increasingly attention-deficit consumers. Given that consumers are continuously bombarded with marketing messages, we wanted to identify which brands actually capitalized on their marketing spend and won mindshare. The survey results demonstrate that GenZ identifies with brands such as OPPO,” said Satya Mohanty, Head- User Research Practice, CMR.

The survey findings point that smartphone upgrades are driving the market, with 55% of the consumers indicated upgrading their smartphone every year. There are few consumers looking to replace their existing brands cause of recurring problems.

About the Survey - The Voice of the GenZ Survey was conducted in top eight cities of India in April 2019, and cut across students, teens and young, working professionals.