 "'Deals@10pm': eBay targets late night mobile shoppers but is it a viable strategy?")
It seems there’s no stopping e-commerce portals when it comes to dreaming up unique ways to woo customers.eBay India today announced the launch of ‘Deals @ 10 pm’, exclusively targeting mobile shoppers. The deals will run from 26 February to 28 February, 10 pm to midnight.
As per the press release,“eBay India will unveil 3 different products every day for eBay India’s Facebook page, Twitter handle & Instagram profile. To unveil the deal, consumers will have to share and tweet the products. The higher the participation, higher will be the discount.”
[caption id=“attachment_77664” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption]
Santosh Rao, Head Mobile Commerce, eBay India, said that 24 percent of eBay India’s customers visit the site via a mobile device. A survey conducted by the company last year revealed that 78 percent of shoppers use mobiles for discount deals and 45 percent visited shopping sites only at night. The results of the surveymakes the current eBay deal a no-brainer.
Data provided by eBay shows that daily, on average, a mobile accessory is sold every two minutes, a piece of apparel is sold every four minutes and a watch is sold every nine minutes via eBay’s mobile site.
And while it makessense to target mobile phone users, given the unprecedented mobile penetration in the country, are deep discounts really sustainable?
Just this morning, Sumant Kasliwal, founder and CEO of 20dresses.com, was quoted by the Business Standard as saying, “Regular deep discount is a near-fatal self-inflicted wound that e-commerce firms have inflicted upon themselves. Companies that used discount as a strategy to scale up now find themselves riding a tiger from which they cannot dismount.”
Several e-commerce portals have shut shop in the last two years due the strategy of doling out hefty discounts despite earning wafer-thin margins.
Competing on price and surviving on low margins is a flawed long term strategy and very few portals have actually cracked the e-commerce space. But one thing is for sure: Discounts cannot be the strategy to stay ahead of the curve.
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