For online marketplaces, the new mantra seems to be ‘merchant is king’ as opposed to the traditional ‘customer is king’. Most big names have announced that they are planning to on board as many sellers as possible in a bid to increase their merchant numbers. In this report, ET says how things have heated up for established marketplaces.
New entrants like Paytm and Shopclues are posing a serious competition for big names like Amazon , Snapdeal and Flipkart. As a result, the online marketplaces are trying to outdo each other in gathering sellers.
Of late, Flipkart, Amazon and others are offering deals and offers to sellers. Flipkart recently advertised a limited offer of free product photo shoots for sellers who sign up. Amazon and Flipkart want to acquire a seller count of one lakh by the end of this year. At the same time, Snapdeal wants to snap up ten lakh sellers.
To this end, Shopclues introduced the Innovatech Business plan competition, and Amazon introduced a program for sellers and small businesses in small towns and cities. Others are offering discounts on commission and delivery charges, and packing and inventory storage.
The marketplaces agree that it is not just about quantity. In order to retain their sellers, they should also be able to offer quality. As far as the sellers are concerned, their goods should sell. With this end in mind, they are signing up with multiple websites. They would naturally go with websites where they get more promotion, better deals, and of course greater number of sales.
However, whether sellers can deal with the virtual reality is the question. According to the co-founder of a new marketplace, some sellers are finding the transition from physical selling to e-selling difficult. Marketplaces are realising this and offering support in different ways to the sellers to encourage them to get on board, and stay. This seems to be working in favour of both parties.
The report quotes Sonu Mulchandani, who runs a fashion store that also sells online, who feels that in her initial days with a marketplace a few years ago, she found their marketing and promotional side to be in wanting. She claims that she had to do that by herself. Most sellers also agree on the fact that they lose customers if they don’t dispatch on time. It helps if the marketplace provides support in terms of logistics firms that are connected to the marketplace. More and more sellers prefer this option over other courier companies.
The time seems to be right for online sellers to join marketplaces, what with the heavy discounts set to reduce, and websites vying with each other to attract sellers.
Editor team is specialized in introducing the marketplace content targeting the Indian online sellers. They plan and coordinate to bring the appealing content for the small businesses on how to partner with the e-commerce sites like Amazon and Flipkart and strategies for improving their online business.
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