Retail Dude

Social media tools like Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, Buzz etc. introduced a fun element in teaching. Don’t be surprised I am not going to talk about education in India. Actually these tools helped India to raise its computer literacy rate from single digit to double digit, which is one of the important factor to promote etailing in India. I will give credit to IRCTC & Makemytrip for making Indian consumer more comfortable in doing online transactions, but will appreciate social media tools how they boosted “e” presence in India.

The volume of online sale is still less but this mode of shopping is catching popularity through word of mouth, and retailers are bidding on ecommerce growth. Thus we can see “Future group” online shopping destination as www.futurebazaar.com, “Shoppers stop” virtual shop as www.Shopperstop.com and www.themobilestore.in of “The mobile store”.

By the way India has its virtual stores since mid 90’s, and the players like “IndiaMart” and “Fabmall” now known as “Indiaplaza” are among those who established a stepping stone for ecommerce in India. Now we have many such online shops where you can find anything ranging from furniture to T-Shirts and books to gadgets such as www.homeshop18.com, www.shopmania.in, shopping @ sify, rediff and indiatimes, www.retailsdirect.com, www.indiavarta.com, eshop.webindia123.com etc but they lack leading brands. They have “Your brand dual sim phone” but not a “Philip DVD player”, but with retailers opening their online store things are changing but they still have very limited merchandise on their online shop. I hope soon we can see range of branded merchandise from Levis Jeanswear to Titan watch.

After doing some research I was able to draw a profile of Indian shopper - An Indian Online shopper is a “male” of age between “18- 35”, is a graduated doing job and prefer to shop from its work location. Women still prefer brick and mortar store and don’t want to miss trails and store ambience.

Recently Google also launched their shopping tool for google.co.in domain where you can search your product and can see results from all this online shops. All these things indicating a detour for shopping – an online store – new shopping avenue for Indian Shoppers.

- Prateek Katiyar

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As Sudip very well quoted some examples that retailers are using to cope with the situation as well as to show sustainability. Reducing size of format or closing the stores can be the solution but it’s not what business permits. Business is all about profits and these measure mentioned can take care of your top line but what about bottom line what about the driving force for which you are in retailing. For the sake of business instead of closing I would like to suggest opening or I should articulate it and should say “Use different channel”, use the internet. Because of this crisis many shoppers are turning towards online shopping and this is not only coz u can get the item cheaper online but because of this economic condition, daily you will see promotions and price cuts on products and internet is the fast and easy way to get this information.

Internet analyst James Wallace, co-founder of free price information website PriceProtectr.com, says “The Internet is more optimized for information than commerce,” But ultimately this information drives the customer to the shop to buy. Online shopping last year raked in $25 billion, and online shopping growth should exceed 10% as compared to single digits for overall consumer spending. But, online transactions still account for less than 5% of total consumer spending. But anyways it’s a sale whether it’s online or through brick and mortar model. By providing the information on internet helps customer in their buying decision and every sale which have any kind of prior online enquiry, should be credited in internet shopping.

And because of this economic crisis many promotional offers and discounts are floating in the air of internet. “We’ve seen price drops as much at 95%,” said Wallace. “A $1,800 set of leather-bound books went on clearance for under $20. It sold out in minutes. In the Indian context I would like to quote my own example: I prefer to buy gadgets and electronic stuff from ebay rather than going to Electronic market (S.P. Road, Blr). I get almost a discount of 500-2000 INR depending on the amount of purchase. My apple iPod classic which was for MRP 12500 INR, I got it from ebay for just 10999 INR and that too in 6 month EMI, five months back, who won’t prefer the easy installment method or a discount of 1500 INR and guess what I got a portable vacuum clearer free with the order as the order exceed 10000 INR mark. What else would you wish?

Again as Ebay.in turned 4 they are giving gift and I just bought an external hard disk which was for 5800 INR in electronic market and I get it for 5500 INR and 3 month EMI and a gift: Nokia Bluetooth may be it worth around 1000 INR. So I believe this to be a steal deal.

The prices can vary depending on locations, as previously my favorite place for gadgets buying was Nehru Place, Delhi and I still believe items are cheaper there any ways. So whenever I plan to buy some electronics item I check Nehru place’s official site for price quotes I check with the local electronic market and then I check it on ebay and with all these offers and promotions I just can’t resist buying it from ebay. It’s convenient, easy, 24×7 access and cheap (think abt EMIs).

Riding on the online shopping wagon, many sites  evolved recently, but each one with different business model, like ratetag.com, naaptol.com, bechna.com and the ultop.com etc, which just provide the comparison for the already existing online shops like indiatimes shopping rediff and yahoo shopping portals (But I must say these shopping portals miss something) And secondly there are online counter parts of retailers like futurebazaar.com. and just to try their online service I searched  for external hard disk 1 TB which I bought from ebay for 5500 INR and future bazaar was selling that for 9999 INR, are you kidding me, this is even dearer then my local electronic shops. ”Garv se kaho hum kanjoos hain” won’t fit here. Why they are not creating something like ebay. I know Ebay is a marketplace but when someone is selling a product so cheap why don’t a biggest retailer of India source the same product for the same rate. I have no doubt on the vendor network of future group; it might be the biggest one I guess. I believe they can do this.

For big ticket item every consumer look for information and more details. So the online counterpart of a retailer will definitely help a consumer in their decision and can also lure the customer to their brick and mortar model. Thus I think online thing is a powerful weapon in the hands on retailers to shoot this crisis, but not in a way future bazaar is doing. Not in a “Oops! page not found” way.

- Prateek Katiyar

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