Perspectives
E-commerce has proven to be a lucrative business when executed properly. Success stories range from eBay and Amazon in the U.S to Alibaba Groups dominance in China with Taobao.com. And in India, there are a couple of fast-growing e-commerce giants emerging too, namely Flipkart (books), SnapDeal (group-buy), and HomeShop18 (everything). As a fast growing Internet nation, its important to grab market share early. Everyone knows that. And these e-commerce companies are fighting to the death to grab whatever they can. HomeShop18.com has been particularly aggressive, especially this month.
How aggressive? First it acquired CoinJoos.com, an online book e-commerce site (but which is nowhere near Flipkarts size); then it rolled out a new and refreshing logo; and third it initiated a TV advertising campaign (ka-ching for the ad industry). Anyone in big business knows that TV commercials are one of the biggest costs that one has to commit to make it successful. A newly-created thirty-second TVC could easily cost hundreds of thousand of dollars.