Bait and Switch: Flipkart made 600 Crores GVM on BigBillionday sale

swatkats

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Flipkart made 600 Crores GVM on BigBillionday today's sale

Flipkart’s CEO Sachin Bansal said his company hit its target of $100 million in the value of goods it sold (or gross merchandise value) in 10 hours on Monday, when it hosted its Big Billion Day Sale.

Source

According to one person privy to discussions in FlipKart's war room, the e-tailer planned to leverage the festive season to achieve $2 billion gross merchandise value this fiscal. FlipKart, the person said on condition on anonymity, aimed to generate $400-500 million sales during the festive season.

http://www.financialexpress.com/new...ales-in-10-hrs-1-bn-hits-on-website/1295950/0

Took advantage of the typical Indian 'Discount' mentality. Not a Good practice for long-term business though.
 

indy1811

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@swatkats

Do you have anything good to post about any company man? I've been reading your threads for a while now. All you seem to do is post negative stuff.

Nowhere does the article mention bait and switch. Did you add it on your own?
 

RD274

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Clearly this will only work once cause almost everyone knows ridiculous these sales are from now on. Lucky flipkart did it first and will get all the money and love.
 

swatkats

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@indy1811
Negative as in.. against Flipkart?
I would like to see facts behind this as well. Plus the average purchase of a customer. 500-600 Crores online sale is no joke, and not so easy.
I have been wondering the same. Assume 4 Lakhs orders came ( came to this figure from the 3 Lakh odd quote in ET ), each person should make a purchase of Rs. 15,000 on average. Which is highly impossible.[DOUBLEPOST=1412611636][/DOUBLEPOST]Now Say thanks to Flipkart, Snapdeal even made Rs.600 crores. WTF! :eek:

http://www.business-standard.com/ar...th-rs-600cr-each-in-a-day-114100600961_1.html
 
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indy1811

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Negative as in.. against Flipkart?

I have been wondering the same. Assume 4 Lakhs orders came ( came to this figure from the 3 Lakh odd quote in ET ), each person should make a purchase of Rs. 15,000 on average. Which is highly impossible.[DOUBLEPOST=1412611636][/DOUBLEPOST]Now Say thanks to Flipkart, Snapdeal even made Rs.600 crores. WTF! :eek:

http://www.business-standard.com/ar...th-rs-600cr-each-in-a-day-114100600961_1.html

No, not Flipkart alone. Most of your threads. If any company tries to make a profit, you seem to have a problem with it.[DOUBLEPOST=1412612809][/DOUBLEPOST]
Facts are facts, go read comments on their FB page.
You mean comments from butt hurt people who couldn't get in on the Rs.1 sale or the heavily discounted ones?

What were they expecting? Lakhs of units?
 
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dafreaking

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If it's meant for the number of people targeted then kudos to them. I never knew One billion Indians had access to the interwebs and knew about Flipkart. If it mean't the number of sales then they didn't reach that target for sure.
clearly, the term billion here is meant for the number of sales or the number of people targeted. it's not the monetary amount.
 
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bond_bhai

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If it's meant for the number of people targeted then kudos to them. I never knew One billion Indians had access to the interwebs and knew about Flipkart. If it mean't the number of sales then they didn't reach that target for sure.

The headline says "1 bn hits on website". I am sure they reached that.
 

psyph3r

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You mean comments from butt hurt people who couldn't get in on the Rs.1 sale or the heavily discounted ones?

Business doesn't mean taking your users for granted or treating them like idiots (Doubling the rate and offering 50% discount, items getting sold out 5 mins before sale even starts, cancelling successfully placed orders after a few hours).
They did it with the shitty chinese phones and now they are making a fool out of everyone. I too added one of the steal deal items to see what the fuss was about and yes it magically disappeared from the cart in 5 mins.
I'm not asking them to sell at a loss or throw away prices but this was clearly aimed at misleading people who aren't used to online shopping. They plastered posters in some cities, aired commercials on tv and printed ads in newspapers extensively for the last month all for this flop show.
Sure they aren't forcing me to buy (haven't bought anything from them in ages anyways) but this is not the same flipkart that i used to order from. It was much more customer oriented (which made it popular in the first place) instead of all these tactics.
 
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Lord Nemesis

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From what I know, they got a stock of 1,50,000 Redmi 1S for sale and they were sold out. That's 90 Crore generated from sale of one single item. So, its not surprising that they made 600 crore.

Whats surprising is that people are surprised about the shady strategies used by Flipkart and calling them out for it. That's obviously how all holiday/festive season discount sales work be it offline or online. There will obviously a couple of good deals for 100 or 1000 that are not and those are the deals you would be interested in.
 

indy1811

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Business doesn't mean taking your users for granted or treating them like idiots (Doubling the rate and offering 50% discount, items getting sold out 5 mins before sale even starts, cancelling successfully placed orders after a few hours).
They did it with the shitty chinese phones and now they are making a fool out of everyone. I too added one of the steal deal items to see what the fuss was about and yes it magically disappeared from the cart in 5 mins.
I'm not asking them to sell at a loss or throw away prices but this was clearly aimed at misleading people who aren't used to online shopping. They plastered posters in some cities, aired commercials on tv and printed ads in newspapers extensively for the last month all for this flop show.
Sure they aren't forcing me to buy (haven't bought anything from them in ages anyways) but this is not the same flipkart that i used to order from. It was much more customer oriented (which made it popular in the first place) instead of all these tactics.

(Doubling the rate and offering discount) If they're charging more than MRP, you can easily sue them in the consumer court.

If you haven't lost any money, how have they made a fool out of you? You wasted time, maybe, but i fail to understand why so much negativity.

What they're following is a pretty straightforward business strategy.

They first targeted the knowledgeable (in terms of e-commerce) crowd with their good service and return policies. They've probably peaked with that crowd because there are only so many people.

They're now going after the bigger segment i.e. the discount market crowd and the impulse buyers. Nothing attracts them like discounts etc.
 
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vinukm

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@indy1811

Agree with your comments just impulse buying.

Think very few products were really up for Grabs and entire day I could not really buy something on steal deals. I was getting error 500 or the product would go out of stock or the price would have returned to normal. Not Sure if my Luck dint favor me or really they were just creating Hype by quoting those prices.
 

psyph3r

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If you haven't lost any money, how have they made a fool out of you?

I didn't lose time or money but something has to be said about their practices. They are just making false claims like it was with the Xiaomi's, 15000 phones sold in 5 mins etc, does anyone even check their claims. I think for this sale they were giving away a paid trip to Thailand which too might be a false claim since no one's gonna go and check if they did send someone.
It might be a straightforward business strategy but this is the second time they've made a mess, here's my last rant on the Mi3 thread (No i wasn't interested in the phone just how FK was marketing it) :

"It's easier to buy controlled substances on the darknet than it is to procure this chinese phone. Register on a separate site, log in 3 hours before the sale, do this do that - wtf I'm not asking for your daughter's hand in marriage i'm here to buy a phone for which i'm paying cash upfront. Start a proper preorder and manage demand accordingly instead of treating your customers like idiots and wasting their time in the process.
It might be a vfm phone or whatever but i find this practice completely unacceptable and it angers me even more that ppl are still lining up for it instead of burning fk on a stake."
 

Onemufc

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You need Flipkart to operate and you need them to do well. Competition is good for consumers but getting worked up because you did not get anything for a less price will lead to nowhere.

Please understand Flipkart is running a business and they wont sell you ALL the products at a steep price. They will sell 1000 and gain popularity. This is how it is done.

You have to play by their rules because there is something you want from them.

If you find a product which you want to buy and its cheap at Flipkart buy it but dont lose mind and sleep over them offering something to others and not you.
 
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