A peculiar tussle is around the corner amid the ongoing growing protests from retail trade bodies over deep discounts offered by major e-commerce players such as Amazon and Flipkart led by none other than the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) at a time when the shopping spree and mood of the shoppers is supposed to be on the top scale given that we are in the middle of the festivity.
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Not to miss the mark all leading online platforms have announced their biggest sales of the year not to be proven wrong.
Interestingly, trade bodies have vocally called out the deep discounts / Predatory pricing, and aggressive pricing tactics of e-commerce giants to heavily advertise and promote the same allegedly violating FDI rules unethical exhorting and appealing to the government to intervene bringing in some degree of protectionism in some sense by timely impactful policy intervention.
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Applying the lens of unfair practices and manipulation of consumer preferences accusing e-commerce giants of undermining the Indian retail ecosystem is going against the spirit of the law is a foundational argument ferociously made by trade bodies.
Focussing on the outcome it comes days after Piyush Goyal, Hon'ble Commerce Minister, Govt of India statement," India wants e-commerce players to be 'fair and honest''.
The doctrine here is," When you go from terrible to bad it is a degree of change but if you go to good it is great".
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This is how CAIT defines heavy discounting, it entirely distorts market competition and the resultant disruption leads to an uneven playing field, especially for small businesses/smaller retailers and small-midsized enterprises failing to compete with the deep price cuts because they either lack the wherewithals or are short of resources to take on/match the offerings of large e-commerce companies/global e-giants.
Sad state of affairs
But to the dismay of loads of local merchants despite these prevalent concerns, major players in the e-commerce sector continue to offer deep price cuts to draw in consumers during this crucial shopping period.
Setting new paradigms in India's retail landscape as deep discounting strategies remain a contentious issue given the hard data trade presents that keep plaguing the industry sectorally and, there seems to be no end in sight going forward.