Samsung has bowed down to mounting pressure from the newly formed, All India Mobile Retailers Association (AIMRA) which has vowed to work for the mutual benefits of brick-and-mortar retailers and maintain price hygiene across trade channels.
In other words, the offline retailers have been crushed by the booming e-Commerce sites like Flipkart, Amazon & Snapdeal which are offering huge discounts which remain unmatched by them. To make things worse, rather than adapting to the market the offline retailers have threatened to cut supply to e-Commerce portals which it claims are selling devices for less than procurement prices. They all claim that e-Commerce giants are bearing the additional costs.
Also, The newly formed All India Mobile Retailers Association (AIMRA) has also been trying to lay emphasis on advantages of offline shopping while the truth remains that e-commerce has made life easy.
Given the growth of eCommerce in India, there is a good chance that Samsung would actually lose some market share. Motorola and Xiaomi are busy breaking records via the e-commerce platform in a very short span and have already stolen some market share from Samsung and local manufacturers like Micromax and Karbonn.
It is really sad for Samsung to be forced into such decisions by a group of retailers who have totally failed to evolve. It would be interesting to see the how the e-Commerce giants respond to this given that they have been raising billions of dollars from their investors.
Going by the old quote “Customer is the king”, there is no looking back for e-Commerce in India,rather when offline retailers must look into re-inventing themselves and move forward.
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