Page 152 - DMGT522_SERVICES MANAGEMENT

Unit 7: Delivering Services on the Web

more and more users willing to buy online, India is on its way to becoming one of the leading Notes
e-commerce hubs in the future thereby attracting competition from various online shopping
firms. It’s been a month since the world’s largest online retailer Amazon has entered the Indian
markets. The online retail firms like Flipkart and EBay are expected to leave no stone unturned
to maintain their dream run in India, but the million dollar question that who will win the race
remains unanswered.
The Amazon entered the Indian market through Junglee.com. This was because of the FDI
restrictions in multi-brand category. The site says “online shopping serviced by Amazon, which
enables customers to find and discover products from online and offline retailers in India and
from Amazon.com.” Previously there were rumors that Amazon wished to acquire Flipkart but
due to the heavy demands by Flipkart, the deal could not precede.
Founded by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, formerly employees at Amazon, Flipkart is among
the top 30 Indian websites and also the largest online bookseller in India. The company claims
to have gained around 100% gain each year since its inception in 2007. They started with selling
books, but as they seemed to find success with their marketing strategies, in 2010 they expanded
their catalogue to CD’s, DVD’s, mobile phones, cameras, home appliances and lot more goods.
With the increase in usage of Internet and people getting adapted to purchasing online, Flipkart
looks set to cross the 500 crore sales mark this year. No tedious payment procedure, an extremely
user friendly website interface and straightforward login procedure makes Flipkart the first
preference for online shoppers in India. One can avail a discount of 15-20%, in some cases even
40% on nearly all the books, which makes one think twice of going to a bookstore and wasting
precious time and effort. Designed by keeping in mind the stereotypical money-minded,
overcautious and over-concerned nature of the Indians, who are relatively new to online
purchasing, there are a very few flaws one can point out in its business model. Keeping the same
in mind, they have recently started 30- day replacement guarantee which will surely draw more
users to it in near future.

Talking about EBay, it’s different from Flipkart in more than one ways. Unlike Flipkart, it’s not
only a shopping site but one can also auction a wide variety of goods and services. It is one of the
few sites which come first to someone’s mind when talking about online shopping. It started in
1995, and without a doubt it can be called one of the biggest success stories of the dot com
bubble. It entered India in 2004, by taking over Mumbai based bazee.com at a price of ` 230
crore. The sellers can sell their products at their own price by making an online account which
is something one won’t get on Flipkart. Coming to their range of products, there’s hardly any
site which can match it. The best part of all their policies is the PaisaPay which ensures that
sellers don’t get money from EBay until the customer is completely satisfied with the condition
and quality of the product. Besides this there are lots of coupons and vouchers one can avail by
subscribing to their daily newsletters. The problem with eBay is that the refund process is
complex and takes time. Also, since anyone can sell their products at EBay, there are chances that
one might get duped by untrustworthy sellers.
Created in 1994, Amazon started as an online bookseller but in the later years, enhanced their
range to a lot more goods and services. Unlike eBay, it is not an auction website. Initially they
started with the option of auctioning goods, but since EBay had already established their
dominancy in that area, they had to work out another system. Thus presently, one can buy/sell
goods at Amazon at only fixed price. Since Flipkart does not offer this option, it is pointless to
compare it over here. Due to the extraordinary customer support in Amazon, it looks like to be
the future lead. Comparatively, it has been found out that customer response in EBay is not as
good as in Amazon, because the number of employees in EBay are a lot lesser than that in
Amazon and Flipkart.
In terms of reliability, Amazon and Flipkart are definitely better than EBay because there are a
lot less frauds that take place there. When it comes to selling, you can sell anything on EBay

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