With the government getting ready to curb heavy discounts offered by shopping portals, online retailers are upping their game to not only expand their customer base but also to retain them. The two biggest e-commerce retailers in India Amazon and Flipkart-Walmart are now wooing customers with loyalty programmes.
Bengaluru-headquartered Flipkart will be launching its second loyalty program later this month, to boost customer retention and directly compete with Amazon’s Prime plan.
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Deep discounting has been used by offered by e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal and shopclues among others to change consumer behavior from offline to online.
With loyalty programs online retailers hope to retain customers. Flipkart Plus’ will be launched on Aug 15, Independence Day, firm said on Wednesday, adding that the program will offer faster and free delivery, early access to major sales events and better customer support.
Flipkart, which is in the process of being acquired by US retail giant Walmart Inc, had attempted a loyalty plan in the past without much success.
Amazon launched Prime, its global loyalty program that offers free, faster shipping and free music and video streaming services, in India in 2016.
India’s e-commerce market, currently valued at about $ 27 billion, is one of the fastest growing in the world and has players including Flipkart-Walmart, Paytm (which is backed by Alibaba group and Softbank), Amazon, Shopclues (Tiger Global) and Snapdeal (SoftBank). The draft policy also covers food delivery sites, online service aggregators offering services and financial products.
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