The government, last week, released a set of rules that ostensibly tackle the manner in which foreign direct investment can enter the e-commerce industry, but also take a hard look at the impact that deep discounts have had on India’s traditional retail market.
Consequently, while the new norms has allowed 100% foreign direct investment (FDI) in the marketplace model of e-commerce, the new guidelines also come with devastating consequences – The biggest take-away is that it has effectively outlawed discounts, predatory pricing and those “big-billion sales” that fuelled consumer demand. In a list of conditions for companies that accept FDI and operate an e-commerce marketplace, the new guidelines state: “E-commerce entities providing marketplace will not directly or indirectly influence the sale price of goods or services and shall maintain a level playing field.” This essentially means companies will not be able to offer huge discounts to consumers anymore, which had become the unique selling proposition for all online retailers.
While this is certainly a big blow for online Indian shoppers, who have been weaned away from the offline retail model through low prices, it also offers e-tailers a chance to differentiate themselves. E-commerce companies can now focus on customer experience rather than deep discounts.
Not only is e-commerce a very dynamically evolving industry, the regulations and norms in the industry are also ever evolving. But if e-commerce companies keep their focus on customer centricity, this is something that will never be out of fashion. With such focus on user experience, analytics itself becomes a product instead of just being a business enabler.
Today, e-tailers have access to a tremendous amount of customer data. Yet about 75% of online retailers have only scratched the surface when it comes to using customer data effectively. Companies that dig deeper into their customers’ data and use that data to create personalized shopping experiences, will leapfrog their competition in attracting and retaining customers. Moreover, they will see significant improvements in conversion rates and revenues.
We, at Infinite Analytics, are spearheading Consumer Behavior Analytics driven decision-making. We create an e-commerce customer’s 360 degrees view based on multiple sources of data, and use predictive analytics on the user data to provide personalized experiences to these customers.
In fact, we believe that assisting our customers deliver greater conversions, increasing brand/product recall value, customer stickiness and customer delight hinge on delivering a standard experience across multiple devices, browsers and channels. We take delight in making this possible being, by far, the only truly omni-channel personalization and user analytics company worldwide!
Our customers are seeing a really healthy increase in conversions; some as high as 217%. Some are seeing a close to 25% increase in their online revenues.
To know more, reach out to us at contactus@infiniteanalytics.com