The hoopla is over.
The ho-halla is here to stay!!
Analyzing GOSF 2014: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly!
The Good: There are a lot of good things about this year's GOSF. Bigger than ever, this year's GOSF - the three day online shopping extravaganza that ran from 10th Dec to 12th Dec saw higher participation than ever both from brands and from consumers. In the third edition, GOSF started in 2012, it involved 450 online partners from segments as diverse as kitchen and groceries to automobiles and real estate. Numerous marketing campaigns not only during the actual festival days but also in run-up to the event were launched by several brands to attract consumers' attention.
Aditya Birla Money’s finance management company MyUniverse was the lead sponsor for the event with 14 brand partners namely Asian Paints, Jet Airways, Kindle, Micromax, HP, Ask Me, CraftsVilla, Cox & Kings, Goibibo, Big Bazaar, KOOVs, Trendin, Lakme and Lenovo each of whom delighted one consumer each day (selected in most cases through a Twitter Follow and Hash Tag campaign) with 14 minutes of free shopping worth Rs. 2.5 lacs from Nov 25 to December 8th.
Their was an exclusive launch corner dedicated for new product launches during the three day festival. Some of the notable product launches included Infinity i.e. Airtel Digital TV on Demand WiFi Dongle, Google Chromecast, Motorola Nexus 6, Lenovo Yoga Tablet and Auxus Rist.
Further, their was a separate section named 299 Corner targeting first time buyers and price sensitive consumers which showcased products priced at Rs. 299/- or less with free shipping and cash on delivery options in most cases.
Did the hoopla had any impact?
Well the hoopla was definitely much more than just a hoopla. Given the growing number of internet users in India and the e-commerce boom there is definitely room for such an event. All in all, it was a good line-up of products and offers with consumer products ranging a few hundreds to costly real estate offerings worth lacs of rupees from companies like Purvankara and Tata Housing. Going by the reports the sales exceeded the wildest expectations with Tata Housing seeing 10000 flats being booked on the first day of GOSF. Similar was the experience of leading construction company Purvankara which reported more than 5000 inquiries and 507 bookings during the 3-day period. Infact the share price of the company saw an uptrend after the news got spread in the market.
Another report from mobile wallet MobiKwik suggests that they encountered more than 15000 transactions by noon on the first day of sales with rising number of transactions on subsequent days.
Any detailed report regarding the traffic during the festival is yet to be published by Google or by third-party sources. However the number of internet users in India is rising fast. The number of mobile internet users is also increasing at a fast pace. According to a recent report by IAMAI, mobile internet users are growing at a steady rate, with 159 million mobile internet users in October, estimated to reach 173 million by the end of December 2014. No. of online shoppers alone is expected to touch 100 million mark by 2016, as per several estimates. If these figures are anything to go by, India as a country has huge potential for those interested in monetizing opportunities internet space.
The article would be incomplete if I do not mention that India's most popular online shopping portal Flipkart chose to not participate in GOSF 2014. Instead the company ran its own version of Bip App Shopping Days - a special discount festival that ran between Dec, 8th - Dec, 12th 2014. The reason quoted by unidentified sources is that Flipkart had made plans of app based promotions well in advance and hence didn't want to have two major promotional plans running in advance. However, in my opinion there may be two reasons behind this decision:
a) It would be safe to assume that majority of people participating in GOSF, at the end of the day, are regular online shoppers who are well aware of Flipkart. Hence from the awareness and top of the mind recall perspective Flipkart wouldn't have gained any substantial result from participating in GOSF especially in the light of the fact that they anyway have good marketing budgets and keep doing several campaigns all round the year
b) Flipkart's Big Billion Day sale, however big a failure you might call it, did give Flipkart huge insights into the online shopping behaviour of Indian consumers. Having participated twice in the earlier versions of GOSF, Flipkart anyway has a good amount of data and might not see GOSF as a must attend event
The Bad: Logistics! They top the chart of complaints. I myself purchased a couple of items from sites as diverse as established big players to new entrants, general shopping sites to niche ones but for almost 15 days the status for my orders said - No information. The order had been placed. The order was successful. But there wasn't any information on whether the item has been shipped or not and the expected delivery dates. Infact from one of the sites I got an email saying I had the option of getting a refund as there was expected a further delay of around 2 or more weeks - making it a month from the date of purchase. Many of my friends and colleagues had similar stories to tell.
Impulse purchases are best enjoyed when you can start using the purchased item as soon as possible because impulse purchases are generally made for low risk items for which people would rather pay a slightly higher amount then wait for an unidentified time period.
Now this is a big problem. You roll out exciting offers in the market, invite customers to go all out and do crazy shopping for 72 hours - only to keep them waiting for crazy hours of unidentified number! While some may say it doesn't matter as the purchase has been made and nobody wants to take that extra effort of cancelling an offer but that is just not true. There is a high chance of people not participating with such enthusiasm in the next edition of GOSF after having faced such issues. Also, for the sites who are using GOSF as a launch platform it might ultimately cause them to generate an unfavorable image in the mind of their initial set of consumers.
Hence if you are planning to participate in the next edition of GOSF, please make sure you have done enough planning to take care of the post purchase phases as well. Cause at the end, the overall shopping is experience is what will matter the most!
