It’s that time of the year again, when e-tailers are lining up discounts galore. As news takes a backseat on the front pages of most newspapers, with ads from the top three e-tailers covering not just the first two but even the first three pages, e-tailing giants are leaving no stone unturned to ensure that they make the maximum sales in a five-day sale window. Amazon India calls it the “Great Indian Festive Sale”. Flipkart calls it “the big billion days”. Snapdeal merely calls it “Diwali sale” (never mind the fact that even Dussehra is a week away). Flipkart put out an announcement that it bagged a 10/10 selling 10 lakh products within 10 hours of the beginning of the sale.
But the other side of the story continued. There were still stray complaints on social media on how Flipkart had not yet learnt its lesson from last year’s debacle. This was important, particularly as it threw up charges of price rigging, the website crashing due to heavy traffic and so on, following which Flipkart’s founders Sachin and Binny Bansal wrote a lengthy apology to their customers.
On social media sites customers continued to complain about all this as well as the mobile app failing to load on their screens and so on. Of course, Flipkart social media teams were quick to assuage disgruntled customers online.
Of course, Flipkart has taken copious notes about last year’s developments. In fact, to keep traffic movement to its website or apps smooth, the e-tailer embarked on a differentiation strategy this year by opening up different categories on different days. While fashion would get a preference throughout the Big Billion days from October 13-17, those shopping for home and appliances could log in from October 14-17, mobile shoppers could hunt for a bargain from October 15-17, electronics and automotive buyers would get special preference on October 16 and 17 while shoppers for books and other categories would get their fix on October 17.
To be one up on the competition, Snapdeal picked Monday for its electronics sale, a day before its rivals began their discount sale. Not content with that, it took pot shots at the competition through its advertising that claimed “You don’t need a billion offers to amaze you. You just need to snap the best ones.” As if readers would not read between the lines, the ad copy even went into using the brand colours of rivals Amazon and Flipkart. Who will emerge the winner from this one? The consumer, hopefully.