Earlier this month, Flipkart’s CEO Sachin Bansal declared that desktop mindset is passé and mobile-only makes sense. But its close rival Amazon doesn’t share the same opinion.
Amazon India’s Vice President and Country Manager, Amit Agarwal feels that the whole hoopla around apps and mobile—only strategy is insignificant. He shared with ET, “Amazon does not see itself as either an app or a web company, but rather as a consumer company.”
The US based ecommerce company that’s giving a tough fight to home-grown Flipkart for the top position, believes that its consumer-centric approach is what led to 500% growth in business volume.
“Such growth can only be achieved when you are focused on consumers”, Agarwal said.
On 14th December, millions of Amazon India customers were greeted with a thank you email from Jeff Bezos, along with a RS.200 gift card.
He wrote, “Just two and a half years from our launch, Amazon.in has become the most visited ecommerce site in India. This customer response continues to amaze and energise us. To celebrate and thank customers for their confidence in us, we are happy to announce an Amazon.in gift card of Rs. 200 for all customers who shop on Amazon. in today.”
Sweet gesture and smart marketing campaign, right? But this gift irked the Retailers Association of India (RAI) to no end. The retailers’ union feel that Amazon violated FDI rules and thus promptly wrote a letter to the government expressing their concern.
According to the ET report, the RAI’s letter stated, “Such transfer of ‘cash value’ to end-consumers, incentivising end-consumers to shop on a website- does this pass the test of B2B business transaction even when cash is directly being offered to retail customers?”
Whether, Bezos’ reward broke any rule, that’s for the government to decide. RAI and ecommerce marketplaces are already at loggerheads regarding FDI violations. Expecting clarity over B2C FDI regulations is a fair demand by retailers, but the outrage over gift cards is a bit too much, don’t you think? Only hope is that the impending verdict over fair marketplace model releases some of the tension from the offline vs online retail war.
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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