Friday, August 12, 2011

IMO - Flipkart : what next


Key focus of the company is customer delight and has gone extra mile to deliver that. The numbers show more that 50% as repeat business. This customer loyalty is delightful to any firm.
The company has done lots of good things but IMO, there are still many a milestones to be achieved and I believe with these it is not a distant dream to position Flip Kart as the best e-commerce site nationally & internationally.

Books Segment
FK started off with books and should be closer to their heart still now with only 1% of the book market being captured by online segment. Moreover infibean and rediff realizing the trends are also forcing themselves into book business.
Key Customer Insight: Online reading is going up : According to Forrester research (By Sarah Rotman Epps & James McQuivey) , Dual-screen mobile phones and netbooks will eat into e-reader demand and that most readers don’t read enough.
Another Report suggests that the e-book market has a direct correlation with the internet penetration , the demographic dividend and the mobile and internet convergence
Key Inference : While I see that the ebook reader market might be dominated in sometime by the smart phones, the e-book reading market is there to stay.

Another Customer Insight : Online reading or searching is a direct replacement to books. Hence cannibalization should not be an issue.

Lack of Space, the re-location constraints, etc indicate that a personal digital library would be a better option for fast moving professionals.

Moreover, not all books are qualified/ found great to be kept with him/ her. That is precisely the reason why piracy has taken up in a big way. They just want read an throw books and that throw-away prices.

Flipkart personalized e-Library
Objective : To tie up with the publishing house/authors to publish the books online and collaborate with the High potential user community to build a online digital library for them.
“In Short : To do what i-phone has done to the music industry” ; Price the books as low as 10-20 Rs
Use Subscription model or pay per use model.

Online Publishing
Another business which seems viable is either tie-up with Online publishing house like Pothi.com or do a vertical integration into online publishing area. This shall also help them in e-book selling.

Portal to Social
FlipKart Widgets : To be placed in social networking sites .
Social community for Book Lovers supported by Flipkart where people discuss about books new releases etc , comments etc .
While reading the reviews or chatting with their circles they can buy the books
Flipkart Credits to the contributors which they can use to buy the book or read e-books.

Store to the User
Similar to the Tesco’s model , Use posters on the substations /subways for people to order books through QR code activation.(www.techi.com/2011/07/augmented-grocery-shopping/)

1 comment:

Alok Dukle said...

nice!! .. i think a collective book shelf for groups ranging from friend circles to say a computer engineering batch in a college would make sense.
and we havent yet reached a conclusion on the tier 2-3 city penetration .. ;) haha

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