A hack to buy value for every rupee you pay.
Every online shopper should know to "Catch em young" while shopping.
Every Indian consumer already knows that the products which they buy online from the likes of Flipkarts & amazons are not usually owned by these stores.
They are just marketplaces which lists the products of others.
The real seller of the stuff might as well be your neighbourhood store downstairs who might have listed it into the site.
Now the problem with these big players are that unless it is a commodity like a gadget of specific model with no differentiation, you can never compare it as is so often the case with stuff like clothes, shoes and such other things.
The trick then is to catch em young to avail of the best offers and value for money from lesser-known credible players.
Let me give you an example of how online stores work:
Neotonn an online store sells formal shirts to men and provides "Quick Suggestion" option which selects suitable shirts automatically on entering your physical features into it.
At present, it sells stuff directly and is not a marketplace similar to the likes of Flipkart & Amazons.
It gives them an unfair advantage in that the stuff they sell for Say Rs. 1000 can be of much better quality than the same priced stuff of flipkarts and all.
The reason is that the said price won't contain the profit margins of Wholesellers, Resellers, Any other middle man & Retailers.
These new players can afford to sell for Rs.1000 what the big players can afford only at Rs.3000.
Often it is an opportunity to get value for money.
What happens later is that in a bid to expand in a big way, these online stores are forced to give up on their manufacturing or direct buying business model and switch to marketplaces.
That is what happened with all the big players you know of. That will happen to all the future big players you will hear of.
Meanwhile you can take advantage of such smaller online stores when you find it just like someone took advantage of flipkart & snapdeal in their initial stages which was a win-win for both. Those big players (who were very small then) could provide higher quality by buying and then selling stuff during those days. Customers could get more value for money then compared to marketplaces which does not buy nor sells the said products.
Meanwhile, you may look out for such online stores which are in plenty while I look to have a booze
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