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The verdict: Flipkart improved vastly from its glitches-ridden event last year. But Amazon scored on both pricing and deliveries!
Two of India's largest ecommerce firms, Flipkart and Amazon, went head to head last week in a five-day festive blowout that caught the attention of shoppers across the country.
Their third competitor, Snapdeal, chose to not take them on directly but instead is running category sales on specific days.
There was lot of talk over which, between Flipkart and Amazon, came out ahead in terms of deals pricing, coped better with the added pressure of more deliveries or sold more products overall in the start of a season that gives them about a quarter of their sales.
The larger context to the story is that as Flipkart's Big Billion Days and Amazon's The Great Indian Festive Sale unfolded over the past week, it was clear that this year the online marketplaces had decided to tone down the level of discounts they were offering on their products, compared to last year.
An Economic Times article last week quoted two industry executives who said that the e-tailers were offering deep discounts only on gadgets that aren't sold too much offline or on last-season apparels.
This was obvious given the ruckus that their deep-discount strategy last year had created, with offline retailers threatening to sue them for predatory pricing and irate companies refusing to offer warranty on products purchased online. As well, ecommerce companies have of late seen their previously-nearly-unlimited funding tap starting to limit itself.
But within whatever was offered, the judgment between which website offered better discounts is a close call.
Anecdotal evidence online suggests both e-tailers put up their fair share of offers. So while Flipkart sold a Samsung Galaxy S5 at Rs 19,999 while Amazon sold a Micromax 43 inch LED TV for about Rs 24,000. Of course, there were also consumer complaints over how both had increased prices for specific products before offering discounts in some cases.
But a cursory perusal of a few articlescomparing their best deals (the articles in question discussed only gadgets) suggests that it was Amazon that perhaps tilted the scale a little in terms of deals offered.
A small online poll that garnered about 176 votes -- though admittedly not an ideal sample size -- also voted 53 percent in favour of Amazon offering the best Diwali offers, compared to 28 percent for Flipkart (Snapdeal and Paytm accounted for the rest).
Amazon had a clear advantage when it came to swift deliveries, and appeared to have seamlessly increased its logistics bandwidth to accommodate more orders. Liberally offering same-day and next-morning (even for orders placed the night before) deliveries, the e-tailer had a clear advantage.
Flipkart, which vastly upped its game, was satisfactory but a distant second to Amazon. (To cite personal experience, about 7 out of twelve products this writer ordered on Flipkart on October 13 were delivered as of yesterday). This was after it took several steps to boost its logistics by steps such as co-founder Sachin Bansal doubling up as delivery person to connect better with customers. During the sale itself, the company had warned customers about potential delays in orders due to the volume rush.
By hosting its sale only on its app, Flipkart would have gained an upper hand when it comes to app penetration -- as it believes the future of shopping is through mobiles (and within that through apps). By forcing users to migrate to it, Flipkart app clocked over 5 million downloads last week.
Amazon, which hosted its sale on its website as well, has been making steady progress there. Ahead of sale, a Reuters piece reported on how Amazon's India website had climbed several notches in analytics firm Alexa's website ranking to sixth most visited in India while Flipkart was fifth. This morning, a check shows the two have swapped places with Amazon now occupying fifth position.
The two companies are yet to report what revenues, or gross merchandise value, to be precise, they notched up last week. We will wait for those numbers to be in.
http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/bu...who-wondiwali-online-sale-battle_3668121.html
Two of India's largest ecommerce firms, Flipkart and Amazon, went head to head last week in a five-day festive blowout that caught the attention of shoppers across the country.
Their third competitor, Snapdeal, chose to not take them on directly but instead is running category sales on specific days.
There was lot of talk over which, between Flipkart and Amazon, came out ahead in terms of deals pricing, coped better with the added pressure of more deliveries or sold more products overall in the start of a season that gives them about a quarter of their sales.
The larger context to the story is that as Flipkart's Big Billion Days and Amazon's The Great Indian Festive Sale unfolded over the past week, it was clear that this year the online marketplaces had decided to tone down the level of discounts they were offering on their products, compared to last year.
An Economic Times article last week quoted two industry executives who said that the e-tailers were offering deep discounts only on gadgets that aren't sold too much offline or on last-season apparels.
This was obvious given the ruckus that their deep-discount strategy last year had created, with offline retailers threatening to sue them for predatory pricing and irate companies refusing to offer warranty on products purchased online. As well, ecommerce companies have of late seen their previously-nearly-unlimited funding tap starting to limit itself.
But within whatever was offered, the judgment between which website offered better discounts is a close call.
Anecdotal evidence online suggests both e-tailers put up their fair share of offers. So while Flipkart sold a Samsung Galaxy S5 at Rs 19,999 while Amazon sold a Micromax 43 inch LED TV for about Rs 24,000. Of course, there were also consumer complaints over how both had increased prices for specific products before offering discounts in some cases.
But a cursory perusal of a few articlescomparing their best deals (the articles in question discussed only gadgets) suggests that it was Amazon that perhaps tilted the scale a little in terms of deals offered.
A small online poll that garnered about 176 votes -- though admittedly not an ideal sample size -- also voted 53 percent in favour of Amazon offering the best Diwali offers, compared to 28 percent for Flipkart (Snapdeal and Paytm accounted for the rest).
Amazon had a clear advantage when it came to swift deliveries, and appeared to have seamlessly increased its logistics bandwidth to accommodate more orders. Liberally offering same-day and next-morning (even for orders placed the night before) deliveries, the e-tailer had a clear advantage.
Flipkart, which vastly upped its game, was satisfactory but a distant second to Amazon. (To cite personal experience, about 7 out of twelve products this writer ordered on Flipkart on October 13 were delivered as of yesterday). This was after it took several steps to boost its logistics by steps such as co-founder Sachin Bansal doubling up as delivery person to connect better with customers. During the sale itself, the company had warned customers about potential delays in orders due to the volume rush.
By hosting its sale only on its app, Flipkart would have gained an upper hand when it comes to app penetration -- as it believes the future of shopping is through mobiles (and within that through apps). By forcing users to migrate to it, Flipkart app clocked over 5 million downloads last week.
Amazon, which hosted its sale on its website as well, has been making steady progress there. Ahead of sale, a Reuters piece reported on how Amazon's India website had climbed several notches in analytics firm Alexa's website ranking to sixth most visited in India while Flipkart was fifth. This morning, a check shows the two have swapped places with Amazon now occupying fifth position.
The two companies are yet to report what revenues, or gross merchandise value, to be precise, they notched up last week. We will wait for those numbers to be in.
http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/bu...who-wondiwali-online-sale-battle_3668121.html
