eCommerce

Whose Customer Am I?

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I read the following question on Quora recently: You buy a pen from a store. Then, are you a customer of that store or pen manufacturing company? Normally, my answers on Quora are rather short. After seeing this answer by Quora's founder @adamdangelo, I no longer worry about whether my replies are too terse. https://t.co/V6UqD1qinA … Read more

Scoping Can Make Or Break A Deal

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Whenever they’re asked to sweeten a deal, most vendors respond with a discount. They don’t have to. In Five Ways To Sweeten A Deal – Apart From Discount, we gave several alternative tactics for sweetening a deal without dropping the price. We illustrated some of them with our interactions with the following vendors: Acme Accounting: … Read more

Seller Power In Online Marketplaces

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Buyer power in online marketplaces is obvious. Choice of platforms, sales returns, seller rating and venting on social media are among the many ways in which buyer is king in online marketplaces. Platform power is also fairly obvious: Blacklisting errant sellers and withholding payments to them are some of the tools available to the platform to flex its … Read more

Why Advertisers Must Pay For Ads Seen By Bots

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There’s a raging debate about ad visibility in recent times. Much as I’d like to think it’s triggered by my post Don’t Fall For The ‘Invisible Versus Unseen Ads’ Charade, the real reason doesn’t matter. The crux of the issue is that advertisers are claiming that ~15% of their online ads are seen by bots, … Read more

Teardown Of Myntra’s App Mantra

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India’s leading online fashion brand Myntra recently shut down its desktop and mobile websites and decided to go mobile app only. As far as I know, this is an unprecedented move by any ecommerce player anywhere in the world and flies in the face of moves by brands to increasingly hop on to the omnichannel … Read more

Mitigating Fraud Does Not Pay The Bills

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Many discussions on security standards emphasize how Chip + PIN and Two Factor Authentication reduce fraud loss and exhort countries using Magstripe / Chip + Signature and Single Factor Authentication (e.g. USA) to immediately migrate to the newer technologies. Take for instance the Finextra article entitled Campaign pushes for US adoption of chip and PIN. … Read more

Treat Every Pageview As A Conversion Opportunity

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Before developing a food discovery startup’s GTM strategy, we recently did a test drive of its mobile app. The app lists dishes of various cuisines from restaurants in the local neighborhood. Like many hyperlocal startups, this one also started operations in one city and then had plans to expand to other cities. As soon as … Read more

Retargeted Ads Or Retarded Ads?

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Retargeted Ad is one of those things on which my take as a consumer is diametrically opposed to that as a marketer. As a consumer, I hate them. As a marketer, I love them. For the uninitiated – or, in this case, the unchased – retargeted ads are the banner ads that follow you around … Read more

Five Ways To Sweeten A Deal – Apart From Discount

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Traditional retailers aka kirana stores sell almost everything at MRP* whereas modern retail aka supermarkets sell almost everything below MRP (for the unintiated, this and other India-specific terms are explained at end of the post). Since Indians are price-sensitive, modern retail should totally corner the Indian retail market, right? Wrong! Modern retail accounts for barely … Read more