I admit I’m bit of a cyber shopaholic! Picking up an FCUK t-shirt or a Benetton clutch online every now and then isn’t really that much of a drain on the pocket. At least, that’s how I justify my online sprees. After all, even duty-free sections at airports don’t sell a Calvin Klein perfume for less than Rs 3,000.
The trend that permeated through the Indian market more than a year ago has seen almost no decline in customers’ enthusiasm. If anything, there are new e-commerce web sites popping up every second day, till date.
Early starters
The very first ones, the likes of FashionAndYou, Snapdeal and Koovs, covered a lot of ground among themselves. They offered not just products but services and purchasable discounts which you could use at your favourite cafés or spas. FashionAndYou came up with innovative marketing campaigns like the one where you log in at 11 A.M. and get to pick products priced at just 11 bucks! I mean, they weren’t selling ear buds or kitchen wipes for Rs 11! It was more like a statement necklace or an Adidas t-shirt that could be yours for what you’d spend on a packet of Frito Lays! Needless to say, it was an instant hit, even amidst serious doubts about the authenticity of the products being sold.
Wider variety
It was obvious then that a lot of other companies would want to cash in on this kind of consumer behaviour. But then they had to offer something that the existing brands were not. So, we had web sites such as Shopo which handpicked products designed by a lot of small-scale or private designers. Hence, the USP of this web site was that most of the stuff being sold on it was authentic and made by Indian designers. If you shopped here you’d probably own up ending stuff that was very unique and not something you’d find every second person on the street wearing. On the other end of the shopping spectrum were a cluster of web sites that focused only on extremely high-end luxury items. You couldn’t just log in and start shopping on these web sites. You had to request for an invite and wait for it just a little shorter than you would for an invite to the royal wedding. However, people got on board on these too despite the online snob value and the sky-high prices for a Sabyasachi scarf or a Gucci bag (which defeats the get-it-for-cheaper purpose of online destinations). There are ones likes ShopInOnIt, which stocks purely uber-trendy stuff, fashion that most of us wouldn’t find in a mall.
Customer (dis)service
Over the span of a year though, there have been many who seem to want to wean themselves away from the online shopping experience. Most of them blame their disenchantment on highly inefficient customer service that most of these companies have done nothing about. The most common complaint seems to be the erratic delivery of products. A colleague who ordered an Elizabeth Arden perfume from one of the top e-commerce web sites, had to wait for two months during which she received at least eight follow-up calls (each one promising that the product will be delivered to her in the next 48 hours), before she got tired of the rigmarole and cancelled her order. Another one paid up for the product, one that never got delivered. Pointing this out to the company and getting them to credit the money back took much more time than she would have liked to exert on buying a pair of sofa cushions. The only company that seems to have left everyone else miles behind when it comes delivering products on time is Flipkart. Since its inception, the efficiency in getting the products to the buyer has remained, impressively, unchanged.
If only e-commerce web sites, which see thousands of log-ins and purchases every day, were as fastidious, it wouldn’t take much for the masses to get hooked to their favourite addiction again!
mahananda.bohidar@thehindu.co.in