MySmartPrice, one of the leading price aggregating platform in India, did a comparative analysis on how newly launched Amazon.in fares when it comes to pricing on Top 2000 books available on various online stores in India.
Like we mentioned in our article yesterday, Amazon currently seems to be the cheapest of the lot with 44 percent of the Top 2000 books listed being lowest priced on their store.
Interestingly, Flipkart was cheapest overall only on 11 percent of the books (considering the shipping costs). After Amazon, Infibeam books were priced cheapest with nearly 17 percent of the books having lowest price tag.
However, there is a caveat that needs to be put forth – Currently Amazon has an introductory offering where they have waived off any shipping fees. So, the end cost to customer is quite low. The scenario completely changes, if tomorrow Amazon.in starts charging customers with shipping fees. Amazon’s shipping charges are expected to be Rs. 49 for books priced less than Rs. 499/-.
If you include shipping cost for Amazon, the picture completely changes. Here is what it looks like
With Shipping costs involved, Amazon does not remain that cheap anymore – Infact, if the list prices remain the same as they are right now, and Shipping charges of Rs. 49 are added, Amazon will be cheapest only on 7 percent of books.
Interestingly, Infibeam (28%) and Homeshop18 (25%) become the top 2 cheapest online book sellers.
MSP also considered 3rd scenario where only List Price of books was taken into consideration – Again the players change position drastically. See the pie-chart given below
Flipkart comes out the clear winner when it comes to List price only. Nearly 47% percent of top 2000 books on flipkart are cheapest, while Amazon ranks cheapest on only quarter of them.
Conclusion
This is a very interesting study done by MySmartPrice.com. It also tells you why Flipkart is so popular when it comes to selling of books. There is a reason why they can sell 1 Lakh books a day!
[box type=”shadow” ]Generally majority of the buyers club their book purchases, so it saves them much on shipping costs. Considering that Flipkart is cheapest on nearly half of the books on list price, more often than not they will offer the best deal to multiple book purchase orders.[/box]
At the same time, it is impressive that Amazon comes in cheapest on nearly quarter of the Top 2000 books. They are surely heating up the competition!
Would love to hear your views on this!
Though this article has some nice piecharts, I would like to point out that, with Flipkart, we are charged Rs.50 if the order value is less than 500. I wonder as to how that was missed in this article. There should be another data analysis done on “CHEAPEST BOOKS [WITH FLIPKART’s SHIPPING CHARGE]”
Amazon undoubtedly would capture Indian market.
Within few months amazon will give tough competition to Indian eCommerce sites. And this competition is good for consumers. Consumers will get good deal and good after sale service+ shipping.
I want to see amazon’s next move to capture large pie of costumers .