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India's Flipkart Has an Amazon Problem

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Re: India's Flipkart Has an Amazon Problem

#41

Post by puranjay »

FK is done and dusted. It still has a strong brand presence but it has failed to capture the younger segment of the market. And this is the segment that often tells older consumers where to shop.

Case in point: my mom doesn't know what Amazon is, but knows about Flipkart. When she asked me how to shop for a particular item on FK, I told her to use Amazon instead.

She is now an Amazon customer. To her, it's one and the same thing, and Amazon is more trustworthy because it was recommended by her tech-savvy son

Re: India's Flipkart Has an Amazon Problem

#42

Post by puranjay »

jayadevan wrote: post #5

Here's what Flipkart is planning to do about it. - Shrink marketplace model. - Increase inventory led sales. - Tighter quality control. - Work with large retailers & cut down on the seller base. - Bring back private labels. - Build financial services ecosystem. A detailed account on how Flipkart is trying to mend its ways is here: http://goo.gl/zRZ1FP .

FK sold me a FlipKart first membership for Rs. 500/year. When I tried to use it, I realized it was only for products sold by WS Retail. Of which there is an ever shrinking quantity.

Pretty crappy experience honestly.

Re: India's Flipkart Has an Amazon Problem

#43

Post by morgante »

unchaotic wrote: post #24

Amazon has a lot of cash & experience to pamper customers but once it wins over, all that'll change. The best outcome for millions of customers is to have 1 or 2 strong competitors to Amazon that'll be around for a long time to come. Else you'll be stuck with Amazon's monopoly !

Amazon has hasn't had any serious competition in the US for many years, yet it still offers great customer experience.

Re: India's Flipkart Has an Amazon Problem

#44

Post by morgante »

dingo_bat wrote: post #13
li-ch wrote: post #9

China's e-commerce sites don't have such a worry. They have Great Firewall. Trade barrier works! /s

I don't think that /s is necessary. I think the years have proved that china's trade barrier has worked wonders for home grown businesses. Look at didi chuxing. Blindly aped uber and worth more than them now. On the other hand look at India's own uber competitor: ola. They're struggling almost as much as flipkart while uber thunders ahead.

Of course trade protectionism is good for the protected industries. That should be self-evident.

The more important question is whether the benefit to domestic industry offsets the harm to consumers. Traditional economics would say no and I'd be inclined to agree.

Re: India's Flipkart Has an Amazon Problem

#45

Post by pkd »

dingo_bat wrote: post #14
steve19 wrote: post #8

Surely this is nothing that Flipkart cannot fixed without some lobbying? I am not trying to be facetious, India is very protectionist. Amazon can only operate as a marketplace, not a seller, yet they have one seller accounting for as much as 50% of sales ... a little suspicious. The Indian govt. has introduced regulations, no doubt from Flipkart lobbying, to remedy the situation [0]. Amazon must be dumping money into…

We do not have lobbying in India. It's called bribing, and I doubt flipkart is doing it. Entrenched companies like reliance/tata are known for that but smaller ones like flipkart cannot take the risk of getting caught.

> Entrenched companies like reliance/tata are known for that

Tangential to the topic, but can you point out where has Tata been found to have been indulging in that? If I recall correctly, Tata has refused to work with the Government when it required them to do something illegal on multiple occasions. This is why Tata went out of the airline market.

Re: India's Flipkart Has an Amazon Problem

#46

Post by ryao »

mandeepj wrote: post #33
unchaotic wrote: post #24

Amazon has a lot of cash & experience to pamper customers but once it wins over, all that'll change. The best outcome for millions of customers is to have 1 or 2 strong competitors to Amazon that'll be around for a long time to come. Else you'll be stuck with Amazon's monopoly !

Amazon never changed in US. They are number 1 here

Prices have steadily crept upward, especially since Amazon started to branch out into video streaming. Prices have become so bad that I am discontinuing my prime membership when it runs out in 6 weeks.

I am consistently finding things cheaper on any of eBay, jet.com and Newegg. With shop runner from my Amex card, I often get free second day on Newegg. Then jet.com gives second day for free. eBay does not, but unless the seller is in China, I get fairly quick shipping.

In any case, monoprice and newegg are consistently cheaper on their main items (cables at monoprice and computer parts at newegg) while jet.com and eBay often beat Amazon by incredible margins on just about anything. I recently brought a Xeon E5-1670 for only $40 and 5lbs of paprika for only $10.49 a lb from eBay. Amazon's pricing was far higher.

I also purchased various pantry items and bananas from jet.com. They were not only cheaper than Amazon, but they were cheaper than the best brick and mortar store deals (which are also consistently better than Amazon), in one case being better by a factor of 2. The bananas were also packaged with reusable refrigerant packs that would have likely cost me more than the $0.81 each of the two banana bunches cost.

I am at the point where I am ready to stop looking up prices on Amazon because I expect one of the other sites to not only have the item, but sell it for significantly less. If by some miracle Amazon does sell it for less, it ought to appear in a search on Google shopping or pricegrabber.com.

I feel like Amazon has started taking its customers for granted. It is like they no longer feel compelled to compete on price because they expect people not to compare under the now false assumption that Amazon's pricing is good. Getting good pricing from Amazon requires using a side like camel camel camel or price zombie and playing a waiting game with them when the price is high, which is almost always the case.

Also, unlike Amazon, you can often stack cash back sites like top cash back, be frugal and fat wallet with purchases at other sites thanks to their affiliate programs. There are even comparison cashback sites like cashbackholic and cashbackmonitor. eBay is the only notable exception in making cashback limited to a small number of categories at most cashback sites.

If you have not noticed a change, you do likely not do comparison shopping to be able to have noticed.

Re: India's Flipkart Has an Amazon Problem

#47

Post by vidarh »

tn13 wrote: post #40
nnain wrote: post #25

Too much negative commentary. Flipkart also did something interesting that fueled their early growth - they offered 'Cash on Delivery' model, cause many people in India don't use Credit/Debit cards for shopping! I never had a bad buying experience with them, but then my shopping has been limited. Must say though that Amazon's recommendation engine and technical prowess in general is superior. I imagine so are Amazon'…

Flipkart was not the first to introduce CoD. CoD in India is an ancient concept. Indian postal service ran a system where one could order products via mail and make the payment at the postal office. If I remember correctly it was called VPP and my grandfather had purchased things like imported Cigars and German radios using this system in 60s. Even in 90s Rediff and Indiatimes offered CoD.

CoD has been offered by almost every postal service in the world. It used to be one of the main ways of paying for goods you ordered, and remained so well into the 80's or 90's in countries where credit card penetration remained low. The main limitation in most countries have been the pickup at the post office.

Re: India's Flipkart Has an Amazon Problem

#48

Post by vidarh »

dingo_bat wrote: post #6

Flipkart has had this coming. They grew too confident, even to the extent of making significantly anti customer moves. Whereas amazon make you feel like you are the center of the universe. Another problem is that amazon's retail business is not a big earner, even after so many years. But all flipkart has is retail. They don't have the technical superiority to do something like aws. Think about it. Flipkart offices ar…

> What are all those software engineers doing? They're definitely not building an aws. They're just maintaining the website.

Consider that Amazon built up the IT capability to build AWS because of the thousands of engineers they had hired that were "just maintaining the website". It's not a simple problem.

Re: India's Flipkart Has an Amazon Problem

#49

Post by li-ch »

morgante wrote: post #44
dingo_bat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that /s is necessary. I think the years have proved that china's trade barrier has worked wonders for home grown businesses. Look at didi chuxing. Blindly aped uber and worth more than them now. On the other hand look at India's own uber competitor: ola. They're struggling almost as much as flipkart while uber thunders ahead.

Of course trade protectionism is good for the protected industries. That should be self-evident. The more important question is whether the benefit to domestic industry offsets the harm to consumers. Traditional economics would say no and I'd be inclined to agree.

Amazon is years ahead in customer support and services. Yes. but in terms of products sold, I'd argue that they are mostly the same: made in China or southeast Asia.

Re: India's Flipkart Has an Amazon Problem

#50

Post by _kwmj »

jdkanani wrote: post #38
nnain wrote: post #25

Too much negative commentary. Flipkart also did something interesting that fueled their early growth - they offered 'Cash on Delivery' model, cause many people in India don't use Credit/Debit cards for shopping! I never had a bad buying experience with them, but then my shopping has been limited. Must say though that Amazon's recommendation engine and technical prowess in general is superior. I imagine so are Amazon'…

You underestimated the power of Amazon here - it's not technical prowess or recommendation engine. The war was never about technical prowess. It's Amazon's customer service which pulling Flipkart/Snapdeal down to the ground and beating them hard.

Agreed. I have been using Flipkart since they launched. Amazon customer service and shopping experience are just impeccable, esp when compared to the competition. And as for Snapdeal, it's usually something just short of a nightmare.

Another aspect is user experience while using their apps and websites. Click any Flipkart link from a mobile browser or an app like Twitter, you'll reach their `Install our app` page. Nothing else. You can't do anything if you have not installed their app. While Amazon simply lets me see the product or even buy it from right there while showing install app or view in app in a corner.

Whenever I see that Flipkart page asking me to install their app to see a product I feel satisfied that I don't have it installed. I just close the browser tab.

I just checked and last time I bought something from Flipkart was around 2 years ago. It was the Xiaomi MI3 phone which was available only on Flipkart. Last Snapdeal purchase was some 1.5 years ago. I wish I could spread my purchases across these portals just to help avoid a monopoly kind of scenario but these options are just too bad to go with.

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