Phone Retailers Get Brands To Go Offline With Promotions This Festive Season

After the first phase of online festive season sales has ended, the phone retailers are ready to bring brand offers and promotions offline. The retailer association has said that the brands have promised offers or promotions during the festive season in the offline space.

The announcement comes after the All India Mobile Retailers Association (AIMRA) raised concerns on predatory online pricing. They alleged that ahead of the critical festive season, the buildup of inventory owing to “predatory online pricing” would sound the death knell for offline sellers and lead to huge job losses.

As a result, retailers and brands have been meeting for the last few days and have now reportedly reached a conclusion. Arvinder Khurana, president of the All India Mobile Retailers Association (AIMRA) reportedly said, “We’ve had meetings with the brands to restore the balance between offline and online sales. They have even promised to support us through the festive season. However, if the talks do not materialise into action, and it becomes a do-or-die situation for us, then we will be forced to consider legal options.”

National and state-level representatives of the association met with top executives of Samsung, Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi and Realme over the past week to seek the same level of discounts being given by the brands to ecommerce platforms on offline channels.

After the allegations, ecommerce marketplaces such as Amazon and Flipkart said that discounts offered online are extended by the brands and not the online channel. Reports have said that online platforms were carrying disclaimers in advertisements on the sales that discounts came from brands directly, and that easy finance schemes and cash backs on purchase of certain amounts were being given by non-banking finance companies and banks.

It is noteworthy here that according to global market research firm Forrester, this festive sale season is likely to account for 80% of the $4.8Bn revenue expected in the festive season from September 25 to October 29.

As per Bobble Keyboard’s data on upcoming festive season sale, amongst the online shopping on smartphones, fashion and apparel reign supreme with almost 82% of users talking about the category and a further 79% being brand-specific during their conversations.

In the sale, Amazon said that the smartphone segment saw 15x growth led by brands like Samsung, OnePlus, Apple, Xiaomi and Vivo. Flipkart said that this has been the biggest festive season for mobiles to date, with brands achieving more than 2X growth over The Big Billion Days 2018. The company said that more than 20 models sold over 100K units each during The Big Billion Days’19.