A Study on Emerging Price Trends and the Impact of E-Business on Smartphone Retailers in Pune Region

A Study on Emerging Price Trends and the Impact of E-business on Smartphone Retailers in Pune Region

Karuna Bajaj

Sadhu Vaswani institute of management studies for girls, Pune

Tel No 9049080990

bajaj.karuna@gmail.com

Abstract

Online sale of goods, also termed as E-tailing has achieved unparalleled growth during past two years in India and the trend continues during the current year (FY 2014-15) as well. Rising interest in online shopping can be attributed to a multitude of factors such as progressively increasing purchasing power of consumers, nationwide expansion & easy access to the internet, online sale of plethora of goods and and services, Popular online shopping sites such as Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal have attained unsurpassed turnovers during the past few months. Mobile handsets is one of the products in great demand where a vast variety of models from Samsung, Micromax, Karbonn, HTC, Motorola, Nokia, Lava etc are offered for sale on the E-commerce websites. Attractive discount offers by E-marketers in mobile handsets range alongside other products calls for a study of discrepancy between the online and in-store prices of mobile handsets. This paper attempts to examine if any disparity exists between online and in store prices mobile handsets. In-store market of mobile phones is competitive with various kinds of retailers ranging from small mobile shoppes, speciality stores to hypermarkets and exclusive brand franchisees. This paper also studies the impact of online retail on brick and mortar stores and presents an account of developments in the mobile phones’ retail landscape with reference Pune region.

Introduction

Indian E-commerce business is at a infant stage. However it is growing by leaps and bounds and today a massive range of products is offered for online sale. In India several online retailers have entered the market during the past few months. They have attracted unprecedented investments from foreign venture capitalists, funds and private equity firms thus gaining financial muscle.

Among the various products being sold online mobile handsets is a quite popular. Despite a vast in-store market for mobile phones in India, E-tailing sites also offer plenty of models.

Innovative web-softwares provide with an instantaneous comparison of the prices of varied products on numerous E-commerce sites . In order to gain visibility and lure more customers to online shopping E-tailers announce discounts on quoted prices.E-tailing sites are using attractive prices as a principal tool to pitch online customers Online prices are revised daily as new offers