The Great Online shopping festival has already started by the midnight of 10th December and it has been anticipated that more than 200 retailers would participate in the fest over the World Wide Web. This would be the second edition of the overall event organized online by Google, India and it is organizing the same in collaboration with a number of online retailers. The event would be mimicked as GOSF and would be featured as a 24 hour long event that would boost up the traffic for all participating websites over 200%. Since the duration of the festival is twice as what it was the previous year, and there are double the number of companies involved it has been speculated that it would be a bigger festival this year and it would be 3 days of well marketed sales along with excellent discounts.
Google has extended this festival by a day after getting a huge response from shoppers with over a million users visiting the site in the first 24 hours. This festival will now conclude on Saturday the 14th December instead of Friday the 13th December.
In the year 2012, Google partnered with over 90 Indian e-commerce companies and it was organized on 12th December 2012. It was again a 24 hour long event to offer different discounts on different sites that participated. But it has to be noted that these websites were doing pretty great and the reason why they have speculated dedicated days for the same is still a matter of question. When this query was answered by the CBO of Yebhi with Google in the year 2012, he says that through this fest, the internal retail ecosystem has been expanding gradually and it does require a catalyst to boost it up. The entire idea of GOSF is to catch up the attention of people who have been engaged in online shopping.
When the participating retailers spoke on the fest they said that they saw at least 300% rise in their traffic on that particular day itself and most of them saw at least 200% rise in their online sales as well. GOSF 2012 was the first ever event that has taken place in India. The event was a grand success in raising the awareness about the trend of online shopping in the country. It has to be admitted that the cost of customer acquisition has been high in India and this trend has helped the customers in catching the attention of customers online, and it has to be considered that all the participating companies have helped to pool their resources for a common objective.
Also GOSF 2012 has helped the revenue of the country to escalate to about 40% compared to what it was in the previous month. The event was a grand success among participating websites as it allowed them to gain direct and instant access to their customers who are otherwise very difficult to acquire.
How special would GOSF be for the users of India?
The Great online shopping festival for the year 2013 has generated a lot of hype and is bound to invite 24 hour rush amidst the online traffic. Google has already announced the launch of the Great Online shopping festival for the year 2013, which would be an event that brings all Indian E commerce players on a common platform to offer the best of the deals on the web. The participants of the event would include classified and local companies, auto companies, online travel sites, fashion labels, telecom companies, health and wellbeing companies, websites involved in banking and financial services etc.
When the Vice president and the managing director of Google, spoke on the event he said that this fest in the Indian version is a depiction of the cyber Monday celebrated in the west and would be an exciting platform to enhance awareness and online shopping adoption of consumers in India. As the country has more than 200 million internet users, and the extend of online users who visit online sites to shop online has been emerging, this fest is of immense use as it involves local, multinational and home grown companies as well. Industry estimates has also estimated that there are at least 20 million online shoppers in the country and the trend is estimated to grow to at least 50 million in the next few years, exponenting the value of the industry to about 16 billion dollar.
Advantages of the fest for Indian Consumers:
The festival is expected to line up a number of incredible deals for first time buyers and bargain hunters and the organizers of the fest are also hopeful that this initiative would help the participants of the fest boost up their sales and set new benchmarks in their daily sales. The fest would also help them to build customer base and build confidence in them to continue shopping online. This year the initiative is supported by new partners such as Airtel, Intel and Paytm to help them create awareness on online shopping and enhance participation in the fest. Airtel has planned to offer a 10% cashback on all their transactions along with other offers offered by participating websites whose transactions would be carried out using airtel money.
Customers could also avail exclusive and exciting offers on the Intel processor powered devices such as tablets, and other 4th generation Intel core powered laptops. The fest from Google also partners with leading e-commerce sites and OEMs to offer some of the most unique deals to their customers to make this festival season the best time to buy some long awaited gadgets for their home.
