3-marketing-lessons-to-learn-from-flipkarts-big-billion-day-fiasco

I don’t know you clicked it or not but I certainly did to see or may be to buy something that’s really worth on Flipkart on the 6th of October the Big Billion day Sale. I know you must have heard both the things that the company generated a revenue of $100 million in just one day and also that the ecommerce company ended up having a lot of dissatisfied and unhappy customers. In fact, a lot of issues that prevailed that day have turned Big Billion Day Sale from a fiesta to a fiasco.

The Big Billion Day Sale campaign has had the fortune of selling goods worth $100 million, which is a record in itself but at the same time, the marketing campaign did considerable damage to the e-retailer’s image as well.

In this article, we will talk about the reasons that in point of fact turned the Big Billion Day Sale into a flop eventually. To give you a glimpse of what we are going to discuss, the post talks about how the basic rules of services marketing and brand building were ignored in conducting Monday’s event.

So, let’s see what went wrong…

Flipkart failed to set objectives that could sync with their marketing direction!

As revealed by the Flipkart’s leadership team, the main objectives they were working to accomplish were:

• Retaining and increasing market share (through aggressive brand building)
• Increasing category awareness for online retail

However!

The ecommerce company of course set highly tactical objectives that were more in nature of stock clearing or inventory moving but that’s not something that created the mess actually. It was the issue with their objectives not getting synced with their marketing direction, which was more critical.

The idea is even if Flipkart had tried to retain its focus on building the brand while setting its objectives for the Big Billion day; of course the company might have scaled down its sales target, but perhaps the targets that were achieved would have been achieved with largely flawless service delivery, which ultimately would have been a win-win play for the brand.

The Lesson!

Set the right objective or target!

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Flipkart failed to manage customers’ expectations!

A very common tactic used to run a services business is to over-promise and under-deliver. The ecommerce company spent a lot of time, money and effort in advertising the BBD sale but in all its advertising, it didn’t even bother to draw consumers’ attention to the fact that the stocks of many products may be limited, and so could be sold out in seconds. Moreover, it also failed to realize the possible loads on its servers, leading to frequent site loading errors.

The Lesson!

Watch over your customers’ expectations!

Flipkart failed to deal with the moment of truth!

Flipkart could of course lure hundreds of thousands of first-time online shoppers to their website in addition to those who already used to shop from the website, but then it failed to deal with their moment of truth. The customers could see the products even after they were sold out and that were not in stuck, which became a reason for disappointment. So, the technology to auto-exclude all ‘sold out’ items from the page should have been used by Flipkart, so that they were not even visible to the next potential customer.

The Lesson!

Deal with the moment of truth!

Afterword

Anyway! The damage done to the Flipkart brand cannot be ascertained in the absence of hard data. Although, it is talks that getting away with little long term damage to the brand would not be a bid deal for Flipkart for a simple answer that the company never tries to build any emotional bond with the consumers on account of being discounts-driven. Let’s see what time has to tell!

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DSIM Editorial Team
The DSIM Editorial Team is a group of passionate digital marketing experts dedicated to providing insightful, high-quality content on the latest trends, strategies, and tools in the digital marketing industry. As part of the Delhi School of Internet Marketing (DSIM), the team focuses on delivering valuable information to help aspiring marketers, entrepreneurs, and business professionals enhance their digital skills. With years of combined experience in SEO, social media, content marketing, and paid advertising, the DSIM Editorial Team ensures that each piece of content is designed to educate and empower readers to succeed in the fast-paced world of digital marketing.