Leading e-tailers kick off war over festive sale offers

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SME Times News Bureau | 14 Oct, 2015
Leading e-tailers Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon have locked in no-holds bar branding wars to push merchandise sales in the upcoming festive season through the digital world.

With Flipkart unleashing its five-day "The Big Billion Days" sale offer from Monday through full-page advertisements in national dailies, its rivals Snapdeal and Amazon have lost no time to queer the pitch by taking out similar ads with smart words and catchy lines, pitching their five-day sale offers.

Hours before sales went online, in response to Flipkart's ads, claiming its offer to be "India's biggest sale is back!", "Its Now or Never" and "50-80 percent off on 10-lakh fashion products", Snapdeal hit back with "You don't need a billion offers to amaze you. You just need to snap the best ones", and "For the best offers this Diwali, shop only on snapdeal".

Amazon India, however, neither flipped nor snapped but announced "India's Greatest Sale starts at 8 a.m.", offering a chance to win 1 kg gold everyday.

While Snapdeal asked its registered users or buyers to "stay tuned for new offers every hour", Amazon offered a new deals every half hour starting 8 a.m.

"We sold a whopping 10 lakh products in the last 10 hours only! With six million hits from across the nation, we saw 25 items sold per second," claimed Flipkart in a statement later.

Noting that Bengaluru, Delhi and Chennai emerged top in terms of visits from metros, Ludhiana, Lucknow and Bhopal were top from the non-metro cities.

"Footwear, men's clothing and accessories have been top selling categories during this fashion sale so far. Men's product categories have also witnessed a huge spike in demand as compared to other fashion categories," Flipkart head Mukesh Bansal said in the statement.

In contrast, Amazon became the first e-commerce player in the country to pack goods ordered online till midnight and deliver next morning by 11 a.m.

"We have launched the morning delivery service in Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, Hyderabad and Mumbai for the festive season," Amazaon India's customer experience head Akshay Sahi said in a statement here.

The morning delivery service has a flat charge of Rs.120 per order, regardless of the number of items ordered. The service is currently available for residential deliveries.

Amazon also provides same-day delivery option, where customers can place their order by 11 a.m. and get it delivered same evening.