Observations and Recommendations: Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal Digital Marketing Strategy

We know that E-commerce is at a very nascent stage in India. Everyday, we come across new player in this realm with bunch of similar services and products with some tweaked features.

As I told you in my earlier blog about my observations and recommendations based on study of top 3 eCommerce giants of India. To my observations, I was not very surprised to know that all 3 companies which are valued more than $1bn in market but yet have lot to do to make eCommerce Platform as "5 star Shopping Mall" from typical "Fish Market".

In the similar line, I have made following observations and recommendations based on my understanding and experience.

Common Observation

1) Surprisingly, these top 3 eCommerce players have been following into each other's shoes and not doing any path breaking innovations and lead by example 2) Flipkart and Snapdeal are experimenting with Indian audience by introducing marketing gimmicks i.e. big billion day, singles day, big savings day similar to US and China instead focusing on building strong technology platform 3) These 3 players are well funded and supported by investors and have full capacities to set benchmark for rest of the world 4) Digital Marketing strategy is limited to Facebook and twitter only and all other platforms are currently ignored or not focused adequately 5) These 3 players are very optimistic about mCommerce business and have been trying very hard to increase revenue proportion from mobile 6) Recently, these top 3 players have adopted or followed a new trend of providing their online platform for exclusive launch of products 7) Print ad, Commercial ad and digital ad seem to be very important part of their brand building exercise 8) Targeting biggest events or shows by sponsoring it is the fasted way of getting attention from shoppers 9) These top 3 players will certainly shift the trend of shopping drastically by targeting rural and semi urban areas 10) Surprisingly, north east and southern shoppers are the one who prefer to search and shop online more frequently 11) 85% of the shoppers are between 18-40 age 12) Handling customer queries and complaints is something a very major area of concern for all these players 13) Brand Loyalty is missing due to lack of experiential marketing and personalized engagement as 95% shoppers buy only because of coupons and deals 14) Unlike amazon and flipkart, snapdeal does not have any inhouse service and products to differentiate its brand. 15) Taking conversations off social media and then continuing to not address them properly, all 3 eCommerce giants are failing constantly. 16) The customer grievance mechanism fails to curtail negative sentiment around customer services. Comments and posts do not resonate with customer satisfaction. Even positive posts from the brand’s end turn into venting grounds for frustrated customers.

Common Recommendations

1) Focus on other social media platforms to give one class above unique experience to users across social media world. 2) It is important to have unique strategy in place specific to each digital platform i.e. linkedin, youtube, google+, pinterest, instagram etc. 3) Path breaking innovation in services and products is much needed to give reasons to shoppers to visit online store. 4) Usage of predictive analytics and sentiment analysis to give personalized and customer centric experience to each shopper. 5) To increase eCommerce transaction volume, it is important to target northern, central and western part of India 6) They should target shoppers of all generations i.e. age above 40 and try to bridge the generation gap of online shopping. 6) Flipkart to have exclusive youtube channel in order to offer visual content to viewers 7) Flipkart to be aggressive at PPC and have strong mobile Re-marketing strategy in place to gain first time buyers 8) Flipkart to have transparent and seamless affiliate program to increase sales. 9) Amazon to have customer complaint resolution service process in place to improve brand opinion score. 10) Amazon and Snapdeal to ensure adequate social engagement activity on across all digital platforms 11) Snapdeal to invest in R&D and innovation to come up with its own inhouse services and products to ensure sustainable business and revenue model. 12) Classifieds could be new revenue stream for these big players 13) The customer grievance mechanism should be made with strong processes and online complaints should be addressed online only instead dragging it offline.

It would be very interesting if I get to know more about from you all. As they say, everybody has different and unique takes for the same situation so keeping learning agility as one of the strengths into consideration, I would love to welcome all inputs from all of you.

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