India’s online shoppers will flock to discount sales, but they’re not known for their tolerance. Xiaomi learned this the hard way when it disappointed thousands of Indians who queued up in vain for its Mi 3 priced at an incredible INR 13,999 (US$231). Like spurned lovers, angry fans took to Twitter and Facebook. Most of them had little to complain about the phone but minced no words when it came to Xiaomi’s strategy of selling a limited number of units in a new market.
Now, it’s Indian ecommerce leader Flipkart’s turn to face the ire of furious shoppers.
For Flipkart, today is its “Big Billion Day” – the day it hopes to get a billion Indians to shop. But for Indian shoppers, it is rapidly turning out to be a day of a billion disappointments. Yes, there are many offers: from Xiaomi’s surprise sale of 25,000 units of Redmi 1S and an extra INR8,000 (US$130) off on a Moto X 2nd Gen to 70 percent off on a Harry Potter box set. But as soon as you click on something, an error message is what’s most likely to pop up:
Browsing through items, I got a dozen of these messages. And I am not alone. Social media is flooding with furious comments from disappointed shoppers.
Some vigilant price-watchers even say that the ecommerce company has marked up the prices of many items to make the discounts seem bigger. As Hrish Thota of Mission Sharing Knowledge points out, “Van Heusen Slim Fit Men’s trousers, which were hovering between Rs.1200 to Rs.1700 in the last one month have suddenly shot up to Rs.2200 in just 1 day! Cool technique to show people a huge Rs.500 discount on their favorite trousers on 6th October!”
A chunk of Flipkart’s latest US$1 billion funding seems to have gone into the massive ad campaign that led up to the “Big Billion Day”. From huge billboards to frequent television ads, it created hype around today’s sale. All Flipkart customers got a nice email from the founders, Sachin and Binny Bansal, saying:
The day 6-10 marks the number of the flat we started out from. And holding India’s biggest ever sale on that day is our tribute to dreams and dreamers. It’s also our way of making sure all our customers’ dreams come true. On this day, you will have over 70 categories to shop from, with flash sales, deals of the hour, lucky draws every hour and unprecedented offers and discounts to look forward to.
One bait that Indian shoppers often fall for is sales and discounts, especially during the festival season in Autumn. Offline, on any shopping street you go to, you will see huge sale signs offering up to 50 percent or more off. Usually, once you walk into the shop you find only a handful of items have a good discount and there are hardly any other great offers. Also, you can never be sure how many of them have been marked up and then discounted. It’s been overused so much in the offline retail space that people have generally stopped rising to the bait. But in ecommerce, sales and deals are still a big draw.
Like Flipkart, Snapdeal too is having a “Diwali bumper sale”, with new offers every hour. Amazon is holding a “Diwali Dhamaka week” from October 10 to 16, with “lightning offers”.
In the US too, special sales days like Black Friday are hugely popular. But in the emerging Indian market, ecommerce sites have already been running in such a discounted mode to grab market share that further festival discounts become tricky.
See: Why Xiaomi faces a catch-22 situation in India, and what it is doing about it
Big backlash for Flipkart on its Big Billion Day
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