by Rajat Sebastian
There was a time when Samsung, a South-Korean company, dominated the smartphone industry. Starting with budget phones to flagship smartphones, they ruled the market with their presence worldwide. However, after 2016, things changed and people replaced Samsung with Chinese brands like Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo.
Though it is widely assumed that the cheaper price offered by Chinese companies brought them a fortune, Samsung tried their best to take the smartphone market back. In the end, finding that their efforts were going in vain, they adopted one last ‘trick’ – make flagship smartphones only. Making flagship smartphones only, they thought would help them be a luxurious brand like Apple and One Plus. Samsung Opera House, the largest tech experience zone of Asia can be seen as one such example of the efforts taken by Samsung to be a ‘luxurious brand’.
Samsung Opera House
Located at Brigade Road, Samsung Opera House or Samsung Creative House is an experience centre as well as showroom and service centre for Samsung products. One can easily reach the house from places like Bannerghatta, Electronic City, Kormangala and Indiranagar. It is considered as a special outlet of Samsung which allows you to take a demo and experience the latest Samsung products. The opera house also treats its visitors with concerts, screenings and workshops. A visitor can receive tailored product recommendations, helpful tips, advice on data transfer, software upgrades and consultations with certified technicians for solving hardware-related problems.
Though the opera house offers a load of above-mentioned facilities, it is interesting to note that they are available only for Samsung users. In a building built by the Britishers to use as an auditorium, Samsung is taking advantage of the luxurious ambience of both the building and the place to create a new consumer culture. As defined in the house’s official website itself, ‘Samsung Opera House is bringing technology and culture together to rediscover the lost sheen of that cultural hub’. The fact that the entry to the house is open and free to the public makes a lot of visitors rely on Samsung products alone because there is such an opera house. Here, the location, the building and the ambience are playing an important role in determining the consumer culture of Bangalore, or at least of a place like Brigade Road.
Going inside, one can see all the facilities available as described above with free guidance of staffs. While most young men go there for a free V R experience, others get in to test the latest products of the company. The fact that they can see, touch and use the products as much as they want eventually makes them buy it too. After all, why go for a smartphone which you have only read online when you can buy one you already experienced? Moreover, the workshops offered by the opera house are also related to Samsung products, so as to promote them, such as on “how to edit videos in Samsung galaxy note 10”, “how to do a portrait photoshoot with a galaxy note 10” and so on. Even if one enters the place to try out new technology, it is sure that the impact it created stays in their mind creating an affinity to Samsung products thereafter. Availability of a cafeteria, a mini lounge and a home-theater makes the visit more memorable.
Hence, in a way, I feel that the Opera House is redefining the consumer culture of Bangalore with their timely and clever intervention of an auditorium building. Creative thinking applied to an abandoned infrastructure thus brought out changes even in the way people think of buying tech products!
Shehari Safarnama 
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