Google To Taste the Online Shopping Frenzy

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Nov 26, 2014

In the later half of this year, two sectors that have witnessed nonstop action and has made the world turn all their attention to them are Technology and Ecommerce. The technology sector has been on the move since July this year with announcements of different launches ranges from smartphones to operating systems to chipsets and new companies springing up with sales numbers exceeding the conventional honchos. The world has also witnessed a stark difference in the selling point of these new tech pieces. There has been a paradigm shift in the way shopping is done from walking into a brick and mortar store to just typing in a few details on your laptop or smartphone and getting the product delivered at your doorstep through ecommerce. The magnitude of shift from store based sales to online sales has been so drastic that even the global retail giants had to start online segments of their conventional retailing business. After receiving huge blows from Amazon (AMZN, Financial) the global ecommerce leader decade old retail stores like Walmart (WMT, Financial), Target (TGT, Financial), etc., had to work towards adding ecommerce to their business function. The ecommerce fanfare is not just restricted to the developed economy but has gripped even the developing nations like China and India. The Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba (BABA, Financial) made history in the Wall Street last September with its blockbuster IPO. Now the news is Google (GOOG, Financial) is also stepping into the ecommerce shoes in India. Let us check into the details of what Google is up to in the ecommerce front.

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Google to give a shot at ecommerce

"If you are about to buy yourself some new clothes, electronics or household items, hold your horses as Google India has announced the Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) for 2014." Read one of the news portals.

GOSF is not exactly an online site to buy products but a platform for several online retailers in India to come together and sell their products at a discounted rate during the festive season something which Alibaba recently conducted in China in which Xiaomi sold record number of its smartphones. We can rather associate GOSF with something like a virtual consumer fair.

The initiative was launched by Google in 2012 to boost the adoption of online shopping in India. Rajan Anandan, VP & Managing Director, Google India, said, “Great Online Shopping Festival is India’s version of cyber Monday in the West and is an exciting platform to raise awareness and consumer adoption of online shopping in India.”

Google has announced that the shopping festival will run December10-12, which is just two weeks away. In addition, the GOSF website announced a pre-party on November 25, as a prelude to the actual shopping festival.

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Several Indian ecommerce honchos, including Snapdeal, FabFunish and FirstCry have already enrolled themselves for this year’s GOSF event eyeing to cash in on the ongoing festive shopping spree and the online shopping frenzy in India. Coupon Dunia has already started issuing GOSF shopping discount coupons for different participating shopping websites.

The GOSF route

Last year the event did create a lot of hype amongst Indian onliners but the show was somewhat dampened by a number of extrinsic and intrinsic hurdles. First there was huge opposition raised by the brick-and-mortar retailers across the subcontinent citing loss of business on their end. But the worst pain was system outage and hangs which frequented the event throughout. Less than an hour after the festival went live, the site went down due to a technical error. Google then had to extend the festival by another day. This time Google must have taken a leaf out of the lessons learned from the previous year’s downsides and would make the experience a better one free of system glitches, especially with the advent of Cloud storage facility in the Indian market. The other attraction is that this year Snapdeal the second largest etailer of India is taking part and a lot of consumer enthusiasm is tanked up against the GOSF events this year.

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The noble aim of Google, as illustrated by its management, behind the organization of this event is not just to make the sales meter of different retailer clock but to add more and more Indians into the internet environment and make them more online friendly considering the fact that India is one of the fastest-developing economies in the world with rapid urbanization in progress and the subcontinent houses the second-largest population in the world. Thus the internet initiative can drive the country to become an economic superpower in the future.

Google India’s revenues have skyrocketed by 48% over last year around the time of this event. As the festival attracts hordes of new online shoppers, Google stands to benefit with the multitude of advertisements and aggressive marketing campaigns launched by ecommerce portals.

Going by NextBigWhat, “Google makes no money out of GOSF, but through the entire year, they probably make more money than ecommerce portals.”

Our take

Google has by far been the most important component in the Indian internet landscape. The reason why I refer to Google as a component is because in India people primarily associate internet with Google. Whenever someone want to refer to searching something online they commonly say “Google it.” Also when a technician comes for repair or maintenance work of the PC or laptop, essentially the first page they open to check internet connectivity is Google search and if the page opens, they say, “Your internet is working fine.” This has seen Google to the position in India that it enjoys now in a country with the second-largest population that signifies the huge business scope. Also in recent times the way ecommerce has been picking up in India it is worth taking an initiative like the GOSF in India.

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This will not only boost the ecommerce business in India but also will add considerable numbers to the revenues of Google India and Google as a whole. In 2012 when the first GOSF was organized it did not gain much hype since it was the first year and the ecommerce industry in India was not conducive enough and last year it was plagued with system issues, but this year it will be a totally different scenario since ecommerce in India is right now at all time high and it would be worth keeping an eye on the proceeds of GOSF 2014.