Samsung plans uniform brand code across operations

Samsung India is planning to rebrand its 100 stores across India, in order to have uniform in-store elements. It is also planning to take its overall store count up to 130 stores this year.

According to the company, Samsung has a single-store brand the world over, which is Samsung Plaza, with India being the only country where the company followed a two-brand model. The company has decided to follow its global practice, while simultaneously enhancing its store count by 30 per cent.

The company also plans to do away with its practice of benchmarking its stores in terms of sq ft space for Plazas and Digitall Homes. The company plans to let geography, location, and localised market size dictate the size of its uniform brand store.

Under the plan, the flagship "Samsung Digitall Home" stores will be brought under the umbrella of its existing store brand "Samsung Plaza". The company plans on transplanting the interactivity of the "Digitall Home" concepts to "Samsung Plaza" stores, so that they are upgraded to more than just a product display.

Samsung has a strong presence in the metros, and will be adding most of the 30 per cent store expansion in non-metros, with a mix of standalone and mall stores, and trade margins differing between the two. The differentiation in trade margins is to ostensibly address the higher costs incurred by mall stores in terms of real estate and housekeeping.

Samsung plans to use its stores for product demonstration, which it holds important for product display, and sees it as one of the success factors given its expanded product range. To address these requirements, Samsung decided to standardise product demonstration across its stores for solution marketing, such as a LCD TV being experienced with a home theatre system, across all its stores.