why cant Indian stores offer "price match"

P

PH0ENiX

Skilled
well,price match means "i wanted to buy a motherboard,the price was $170 and amazon.com had it for $150.i walked into a nearby store,showed them the amazon price and they offered me the board for $150,u found something cheaper at a competitor and we match the price"

now in india why dont we have this?,indian shops need to stop trying to sell no warranty ,its risky online crap to online shoppers and offer some services.and i have heard this on places like chroma.

and i know there are some great honest shops in the town,i only shop from them now
 
Last edited:
Cause there are n number of middlemen in the retail business here. Everyone and their known relative becomes a dealer or distributor and keeps the margin to themselves. By the time it comes to the retailer, there's just very little margin left from the MRP or the market selling price. Even if the retailer or shopkeeper wanted to match the price he couldn't. Another point to note is large volumes bring down prices. If you are a large retail chain like Dmart or Big Bazaar, you can negotiate the price directly with the company and bring down cost price and give discount. Shopkeepers who buy on the basis of inventory of a few items that takes a month to sell cant do this.

Edit: back to the point of price match, I think both Amazon and Flipkart or Big Bazaar had some type of sales going on where they would give the difference if you linked to a better deal. I found a better deal once and put that link in Amazon but did not hear anything from them.
 
I had a chance to talk to someone who is working as a product manager at an e-commerce site. I asked him a similar question on why there was no price consistency. So what I learned was distribution channels in India is broken. What this means is one guy can get an one batch number product marked with lower MRP while the other might get another batch number marked with higher MRP. There might be even a difference in "free offers". For example I bought Pears soap from Big Basket and then recently I bought another one from Amazon Pantry. Both product are same weight, price and even the manufacturing date but batch numbers are different. One of them has some "free sample" offer while other doesn't. This all leads to customers targeting the e-commerce site. Hence they have very little incentive to try and do a price match.
 
6pack said:
Cause there are n number of middlemen in the retail business here. Everyone and their known relative becomes a dealer or distributor and keeps the margin to themselves. By the time it comes to the retailer, there's just very little margin left from the MRP or the market selling price. Even if the retailer or shopkeeper wanted to match the price he couldn't. Another point to note is large volumes bring down prices. If you are a large retail chain like Dmart or Big Bazaar, you can negotiate the price directly with the company and bring down cost price and give discount. Shopkeepers who buy on the basis of inventory of a few items that takes a month to sell cant do this.

Edit: back to the point of price match, I think both Amazon and Flipkart or Big Bazaar had some type of sales going on where they would give the difference if you linked to a better deal. I found a better deal once and put that link in Amazon but did not hear anything from them.
Click to expand...

this is the answer i am looking for,right on point.
so what exactly do we need here?how do we remove these middlemen,will the system improve over time as the country develops?
 
Can't remove middle men. This retailer dealer system will always be there. Companies want their products to reach as far out as possible.
They'll rather help the retailer's than look at the customers.

Look at the number of shops in each building coming up. The sheer amount of shops and people buying stuff from the nearest stores will only give rise to this system. Intermediate dealers are going no where. More retail shops = more business for them. If you remove retailer's and only keep malls, the prices aren't going down. Malls will suddenly stop giving out discounts since they are in a good situation.
Small stores are like a check on prices imo. Another point is the travel time. People will prefer walking distance while shopping rather than having to take some form of public transport to go to a mall. Another point is, you get to talk to the shop keeper and catch up on local gossip which you cannot do in a mall or online. You can also touch and feel items like grains or see build quality of stuff before buying. And most importantly the haggling. You can only haggle on the price in a small store or on the street.
 
6pack said:
Can't remove middle men. This retailer dealer system will always be there. Companies want their products to reach as far out as possible.
They'll rather help the retailer's than look at the customers.

Look at the number of shops in each building coming up. The sheer amount of shops and people buying stuff from the nearest stores will only give rise to this system. Intermediate dealers are going no where. More retail shops = more business for them. If you remove retailer's and only keep malls, the prices aren't going down. Malls will suddenly stop giving out discounts since they are in a good situation.
Small stores are like a check on prices imo. Another point is the travel time. People will prefer walking distance while shopping rather than having to take some form of public transport to go to a mall. Another point is, you get to talk to the shop keeper and catch up on local gossip which you cannot do in a mall or online. You can also touch and feel items like grains or see build quality of stuff before buying. And most importantly the haggling. You can only haggle on the price in a small store or on the street.
Click to expand...

Retailers are more often a pain to deal with, in India. They won't accept returns, refunds etc (even if you bought the item just 5minutes back and fold a flaw).

As for bargaining for a price. I would much prefer having a fixed price on similar goods than to have a shopkeeper set his price high just because "he knows the customers haggle".
 
You can't "remove the middlemen". They are essential and provide employment opportunities esp., to illiterate/school dropout type persons. They are also start-ups in the true sense - not in the media spotlight as they are not "app"-centric start-ups!

Some of my colleagues bought a few ACs, mobile phones. They wanted to touch n feel the device before buying. The dealer matched the online price to within 500Rs. for the AC and 300Rs for the phone. All parties were happy. Dealers got business, customers physically checked & bought.
 
^ Yes, the middle men provide employment, but when it comes to an issue, please goto the service centre. And the I dont care attitude. These are exactly the things I hate.

All are middle men, from the distributor to the retailer. Todays experience with a vendor in LR (some shop next to MacIT solutions) has made me decide, I am no longer going to deal with the smaller shops, where they are A. Looking to fleece customers and B. I dont care attitude, and would stick to Prime and bigger shops. I may be just looking for a mini ITX board, but if you act as if I am non existent, then I will not buy anything from you henceforth.
 
vivek.krishnan said:
^ Yes, the middle men provide employment, but when it comes to an issue, please goto the service centre. And the I dont care attitude. These are exactly the things I hate.

All are middle men, from the distributor to the retailer. Todays experience with a vendor in LR (some shop next to MacIT solutions) has made me decide, I am no longer going to deal with the smaller shops, where they are A. Looking to fleece customers and B. I dont care attitude, and would stick to Prime and bigger shops. I may be just looking for a mini ITX board, but if you act as if I am non existent, then I will not buy anything from you henceforth.
Click to expand...

I've had the same experience yesterday when I got my i7 and Z170 board. Retailers took 2-3 hours to give me a price for 1 board because they did not even know that i7 and i7-6700k are different.

Also, there's no guarantee if you get a DoA board or a faulty CPU. They will direct you to service center.

I would rather pay 300-500 extra to not deal with all that hassle
 
Also the online retailers are giving discounts by bearing the loss to gain the market share. Especially in case of mobile phones. The same mayn't be feasible for offline stores.
 
vivek.krishnan said:
^ Yes, the middle men provide employment, but when it comes to an issue, please goto the service centre. And the I dont care attitude. These are exactly the things I hate.

All are middle men, from the distributor to the retailer. Todays experience with a vendor in LR (some shop next to MacIT solutions) has made me decide, I am no longer going to deal with the smaller shops, where they are A. Looking to fleece customers and B. I dont care attitude, and would stick to Prime and bigger shops. I may be just looking for a mini ITX board, but if you act as if I am non existent, then I will not buy anything from you henceforth.
Click to expand...
Same experience with CTC yesterday. Went to buy wireless keyboard for friend since it was urgent requirement. Most of the shops were closed on account of it being sunday. Went to few shops and all of them had same Dell wireless and mouse keyboard. They were not even keen on selling it, just showed that same model and told us the price. When asked about few other models, they just showed iball and intex brands. But all were keen on selling Dell brand. Totally uninteresed to make effort selling the product.

But still bought it from swetha computers since it was little cheaper and we needed it urgently
 
F_Sha said:
I've had the same experience yesterday when I got my i7 and Z170 board. Retailers took 2-3 hours to give me a price for 1 board because they did not even know that i7 and i7-6700k are different.

Also, there's no guarantee if you get a DoA board or a faulty CPU. They will direct you to service center.

I would rather pay 300-500 extra to not deal with all that hassle
Click to expand...
same here,went to buy a z170 board.
on first store the shopkeeper asked which processor will i use and then showed me a h110 msi board and said it will work,he tried for 10 minutes to sell me the board saying it works with 6gen processors,then accused me of wasting his time and how there are no bigger mobos then that,i walked out.
second store the movement i asked the prices of z170 boards the shopkeeper flat out asked "online dekha hai kya?hamare pas kuch nahi hai".

since then i havent entered a computer store,unless its reputed and big[DOUBLEPOST=1478511061][/DOUBLEPOST]
GadVeen said:
Also the online retailers are giving discounts by bearing the loss to gain the market share. Especially in case of mobile phones. The same mayn't be feasible for offline stores.
Click to expand...
i needs to be done.this will force cheap stores to shut.they have ripped us off enough
 
Back
Top