While browsing for online books today, suddenly came across infibeam.com... I used to think that flipkart was cheap, who else can offer books at 40% discount. And due to my mistaken notion, never thought of checking other ecommerce websites. But lola....enter infibeam.com and Homeshop18.com giving books the same books as flipkart at 50% discount. This makes me ponder if the buyers like were actually buying overpriced products before these ecommerce buzz set in or are flipkart and infibeam are fighting themselves to death. After a little search found an interesting blog
http://www.firstpost.com/business/flip-side-of-flipkart-red-ink-for-e-tailers-rip-book-shops-185400.html
Can't agree more with the writer of the above blog. A little search showed me that Amazon the world's largest ecommerce site has 14% expense for (in finance terms selling and administrative expense) running their operations. Now on a rs500 book on flipkart, there is usually a 40% discount. Add to that the courier charges of free shipping of rs20 by a conservative estimate plus say a 8% operational expense (assuming india is a low cost country and a 14% expense can be brought down to 8% in india); the total discount on the book amount to 500*.4+500*.08+20=260 (more than 50%). Lol, looks unsustainable by all measures.
These online portals will become ideal short sell once they get listed.....hope they survive long enough to get listed :)
http://www.firstpost.com/business/flip-side-of-flipkart-red-ink-for-e-tailers-rip-book-shops-185400.html
Can't agree more with the writer of the above blog. A little search showed me that Amazon the world's largest ecommerce site has 14% expense for (in finance terms selling and administrative expense) running their operations. Now on a rs500 book on flipkart, there is usually a 40% discount. Add to that the courier charges of free shipping of rs20 by a conservative estimate plus say a 8% operational expense (assuming india is a low cost country and a 14% expense can be brought down to 8% in india); the total discount on the book amount to 500*.4+500*.08+20=260 (more than 50%). Lol, looks unsustainable by all measures.
These online portals will become ideal short sell once they get listed.....hope they survive long enough to get listed :)
The Electronic downloads section is expected to develop in Indian Ecommerce industry due to the huge increase of mobile gadgets and the solutions available over the Online.
ReplyDeleteWarehouse Outlet
surely electronic downloads is gonna pickup; but the key selling point of this ecommerce websites of close to 30-40% discount is absent in electronic products. To give an eg; i recently purchased a BlackBerry 9320 model which flipkart was selling at 15990 (at MRP and without any discount); i got the same from my local shop at15000 (only infibeam had a cheaper price of 14600-hardly a 2-3% discount); not sure how many people would be even bothered about such a small discount.
ReplyDeleteActually i browsed for the various models online, noted down the price of the ones i like and then went and purchased it in the local shop :)...the same thing happens for books though in a reverse order; readers generally go and read books they like at crossword and then go and buy the same online