FLASH SALES IMPACT ON E-COMMERCE BUSINESS

Abstract

The Indian E-commerce industry is growing multifolds and is expected to reach $20 Billion by 2020. This is due to changing mind-set of the Indian customers and ease of shopping online. Major Indian E-commerce companies have come up with strategies year on year to lure the customers – Flash sales one amongst them. Flash sales such as Flipkart’s – ‘Big Billion Day’, Amazon. In- “Great Indian Shopping Festival” and Snapdeal’s- ‘Unbox Zindagi (Unbox Life)’ provide promotional sales on deeply discounted prices on major Indian festivals. The objective of the study is to understand the impact of flash sales such as coupons, sample, price discount and buy one get one free as a sales promotion tool on consumer behaviour and consequently on revenues, sales, traffic and logistics of 3 major Ecommerce platforms of India i.e. Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal. Data related to the flash sales of 3 major online retailers from 2011 to 2018 wiz Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon, was collected from secondary sources in order to analyse the impact of Flash sales on E commerce companies with respect to sales, revenues, website traffic and logistics. The study will help e- commerce companies understand the impact of flash sales for them.