1. 1
INTERNSHIP 2016
(3rd June-31st July)
Comparative Benchmarking of customer contact options of Amazon, Myntra, Flipkart
& Snapdeal
Submitted to: Submitted by:
Mr. Sriram Shankar Mr. Harsh Gupta
Vice President (Customer experience) Intern (CC)
Myntra.com
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Amity School Of Economics
Amity University, Uttar Pradesh
Session 2014-17
INTERNSHIP 2016
(3rd June-31st July)
Comparative Benchmarking of customer contact options of Amazon, Myntra, Flipkart
& Snapdeal
Submitted to: Submitted by:
Dr. Mahua Bhattacharjee Mr. Harsh Gupta
Associate Professor A6018214079
Amity School of Economics
3. 3
Candidate’s Declaration
I hereby declare that the work, which is being presented in the Major
Project/Seminar/Term Paper, entitled “Comparative Benchmarking of customer
contact options of Amazon, Myntra, Flipkart & Snapdeal ” In partial fulfillment for
the award of Degree of “BA (H.) Economics” submitted to the Amity School of
Economics, Amity University, Uttar Pradesh is a record of my own investigations
carried under the Guidance of Dr. Mahua Bhattacharjee of Amity School of
Economics.
I have not submitted the matter presented in this report anywhere for the award of any
other Degree.
(Signature of Candidate)
Harsh Gupta
A6018214079
BA (H.) Economics
Batch 2014-17
Counter Signed by
Dr. Mahua Bhattacharjee
Associate Professor
Amity School of economics
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Amity School of Economics
CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that Harsh Gupta of, BA (H)-Economics 2014-2017 5th Semester,
has presented a seminar on “Comparative Benchmarking of customer contact options
of Amazon, Myntra, Flipkart & Snapdeal” in partial fulfillment for the award of the
degree of BA (H)-Economics under Amity University, Uttar Pradesh.
08/08/16
Dr. Mahua Bhattacharjee Prof. (Dr.) Shalini Singh Sharma
Associate Professor Director
Amity School of economics Amity School of Economics
5. 5
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT (Internal Guide)
I acknowledge my heartiest regards to our honorable Project instructor ‘Mr. Sriram
Shankar, Vice President –Customer Experience at Myntra’ for giving us the
opportunity to carry out this Research work. His valuable advice and guideline helped
us a lot in preparing this term paper successfully. Otherwise the task of preparing this
term paper would have been harder in our part. Our academic career has profited
greatly by doing this assignment as a part of our internship at Myntra. At first we
would like to remember the almighty Allah for blessing us with the strength, ability
and patience to do this task. During the period of preparing the term paper on
‘Comparative Benchmarking of customer contact options of Amazon, Myntra,
Flipkart &Snapdeal’ we had gained altruistic assistance from number of persons in
the office. We are thankful to them.
6. 6
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT (Faculty Guide)
I acknowledge my heartiest regards to our honorable Project instructor ‘Dr. Mahua
Bhattacharjee- Associate professor, Amity school of Economics’ for giving us the
opportunity to carry out this Research work. Her valuable advice and guideline helped
us a lot in preparing this term paper successfully. Otherwise the task of preparing this
term paper would have been harder in our part. Our academic career has profited
greatly by doing this assignment as a part of our Degree. At first we would like to
remember the almighty Allah for blessing us with the strength, ability and patience to
do this task. During the period of preparing the term paper on ‘Comparative
Benchmarking of customer contact options of Amazon, Myntra, Flipkart &Snapdeal’
we had gained altruistic assistance from number of persons in the department. We are
thankful to them.
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OBJECTIVE
The main objective of conducting this research and study is to:
Know as to which E-commerce online shopping portal is more customer
centric.
Know what can further be Improved by Myntra to provide top notched online
shopping experience to its customers.
Know the model of working of Myntra, Amazon, Snapdeal and Flipkart.
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INTRODUCTION
Ever since Internet has been introduced to the world, it has made a huge impact on
people; business is one of such example where Internet has made the difference. In
July 1995 Amazon.com started selling books online and the response they received
was unexpected as in short timespan books sold online in all 50 states of USA and 45
countries. Amazon presently offers music, movies, toys, electronics and home
equipment, there are seven different international websites of Amazon with
distributed customer service centers in seven countries and over 17,000 people work
in Amazon worldwide. Today there are over 100
Popular e-commerce websites are providing online services worldwide out of which
Myntra.com, Amazon, Flipkart & Snapdeal are the most prominent one in India. An
e-commerce opens the global market to the customer, it helps the customer by
providing huge options while buying a Product or a service, the online searching and
comparing facilities enables customer to select right product or service, another Major
advantage of e-commerce is that it is 24x7 available to the customer the customer can
shop almost anything within his/hers comfort zone just by sitting at home, office,
during travel or almost from any place at any time.
E-commerce is trading of services and products with the help of Internet. E-commerce
introduced in the end of 70s and became popular during the 90s in western countries
like USA and UK. E-commerce introduced new possibilities in trading and attracted
attention of many traders.
E-commerce offers products and services through websites, a customer simply has to
visit an e-commerce website and browse various offering through browser catalog, a
customer can select multiple offerings and can add them to the shopping cart, once the
shopping is done the customer can checkout and proceed to payment section where
various online payment options are available like internet banking, credit card, debit
card etc. Once the payment is done the customer is notified about the order and order
is shipped on the postal address provided by the customer.
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RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The research is based on both primary data enclaved for a survey done in university
area of Bangalore with the target population, 17-30 Years. And secondary data
collected from Internet sources like Websites, Online Journals, EBooks and
Newspaper publications. The scope of the present study is to analyze the current
status of e-commerce companies Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra & Snapdeal in Indian
market. There are various steps involved in the research methodology, such as
problem identification, collection of secondary data, analysis of data using graphical
technique and comparative analysis. The data analysis is done using graphical
technique such as Pie chart and the comparative analysis is represented using bar
chart.
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Flipkart Vs. Myntra Vs. Snapdeal Vs. Amazon: Compare E-Commerce sites
History and Foundation -
Whenever discussing about any business or industry, discussing the history seems
sensible. It is not an unknown fact that in the field of online retailer ship, Amazon was
the first one to come and tap the button. It took Amazon years because it actually
made some real profit out of the business. Surely, they have much more substance
when it comes to experience. On the other hand, the creators of the Indian banner, the
Bansals are products of IIT Delhi and before they actually started Flipkart, they had
worked in Amazon for a few years. It wouldn't be wrong to say that the creators of
Flipkart drew experience from the very company they are competing today. Now, the
question is whether experience enough can beat the intellect and intelligence of two
engineering minds from the best technology institute of the nation? Myntra is an
Indian E-commerce company of fashion and casual lifestyle products, headquartered
in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. Indian Institute of Technology graduates founded the
company in 2007 with a focus on personalization of gift items. By 2010, Myntra
shifted its focus to the online retailing of branded apparel. In May 2014, Myntra.com
merged with Flipkart to compete against Amazon, which entered the Indian market in
June 2013, and other established offline retailers like Future Group, Aditya Birla
Group and Reliance Retail. Snapdeal is an online marketplace, based in New Delhi,
India. The company was started by Kunal Bahl, a Wharton graduate as part of the
dual degree M&T Engineering and Business program at Penn, and Rohit Bansal, an
alumnus of IIT Delhi in February 2010. Snapdeal currently has 275,000 sellers, over
30 million products and a reach of 6,000 towns and cities across the
country[3] Investors in the company include Softbank corp, Ru-Net Holdings,
Tybourne Capital, PremjiInvest, Alibaba group, IndoUS Ventures, Kalaari Capital,
Saama Capital, Foxconn Technology Group, Blackrock, eBay, Nexus Ventures, Intel
capital, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Singapore-based investment entity Brother
Fortune Apparel and Rattan TATA When Snapdeal acquired Free charge in an equity
deal, investors Sequoia Capital India, Valiant Capital, Sofina, Ru-Net Holdings, and
Tybourne Capital also became shareholders in Snapdeal.
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Risks and Backup -
Talk about who has more to lose in the battle of sales figures. Well, surely Flipkart.
The reason why we're putting forward this argument is the fact that Flipkart does only
one kind of business, which is that of online retailer ship. Besides just more
experience, on the other hand, Amazon is backed up by more business streams, which
it's been successfully carrying out. Let's take the example of Amazon Web Services,
which is known to be generating a lot of revenue for the company. Even if it loses its
hand in the Indian market to its main rival Flipkart, it does not have too much to lose.
Myntra on the other hand being a major icon in terms of Fashion in all sense be that
apparels, accessories & home décor is also enclaved as risk lover as there is only one
kind of business. Recently it also started offering its customers the option of buying
headphones and some other electronic items keeping in mind the trend and
competition. If we talk about Snapdeal, it is lagging on its order delivery
commitments and due to high competition, Flipkart and Amazon (The e-commerce
giant) deliver to many places at which snapdeal doesn't.
In-House Brands and other Innovations -
It is a recent buzz according to which Amazon is busy building (or has probably
built) drones to increase its business. Sooner or later drones will be acting as your
local delivery boy and will be delivering goods at your footsteps and giving online
retailer ship just another level. So, you don't have to worry too much anymore
whether the person delivering goods to your address is confused at how to find your
address. Who knows? Maybe Amazon someday makes it possible: a customer
wishing to get delivered a set of books merely has to locate his house on Google maps
and a flying machine comes with the stuff you ordered. Flipkart has its own brand
now - "DigiFlip". It has a range of computer accessories like mice and laptop
bags. Digiflip in consumer electronics, Citron in home appliances and Flippd in
apparels. Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, sells its own brand of computers,
mobile accessories and other products through its private label line
called AmazonBasics. Amazon kindles as been on a roll and enclaved success to a
new height. Amazon wants to grow its online presence selling apparel. To attract
fashion brands, it is employing a new strategy on pricing and launched a new show to
spark sales.
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Kick Start –
Amazon and Flipkart started their journeys and turned out popular but how did they
start? Both the brands are known to have started their travails with books. Books were
what Amazon began with and it was what Flipkart targeted to achieve first when they
were nothing but a warehouse. However, talking about books, it is a popular opinion
that Amazon is cheaper dealing with when it comes to books. Not only does it involve
less shipping charges, it has more seller options usually. Snapdeal initially didn’t have
anything new apart from what Amazon, and Flipkart offer but the rate at which it
grew was something exceptionally phenomenal. On the other hand Myntra started its
travails with focus on personalization of gift items and then later to fashion apparels
etc.
Model of working –
Both Amazon and Flipkart had started with their own warehouse but today; both
follow the common similar marketplace model. However, talking about the same,
Flipkart and Amazon India are known to be sharing a difference, which is again about
books. While Flipkart enjoys putting its warehouses into good use when it comes to
stocking books, Amazon likes to continue working in the trend it enjoys – that is, with
the marketplace model. Snapdeal adapted the Groupon model in India. Snapdeal
negotiates a deal with the merchant and negotiates its revenue share in the discounted
value. It charges only its revenue share to the customer for issuing a coupon and asks
the customer to pay the merchant's share directly to the merchant. Over a period of
time Snapdeal evolved from Groupon model to Amazon model. They understood
the trend and shifted there with existing customer based. They are making money
through profit sharing with retailer. They build their model as market place for
retailers and earning or sharing profit from their sales. On the other hand Myntra
Model of working is “X% commission on the total sale value given to the seller”. For
branded stuff, it used to be procurement from brands at X Price and selling it at X+Y
price. Later they pivoted into a Marketplace model where every seller who makes a
sale pays a commission to Myntra. The percentage commission varies on the type of
product that Myntra facilitates. It may range anywhere between 5% to 20% of the
sale value (excluding taxes and discounts).
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Presentation –
While the websites of Myntra, Flipkart is presented with the use of bright colors and
beautiful buttons, Amazon and Snapdeal on the other side lags much behind in the
name of presentation and colors, as its less customer centric than Myntra. Though
amazon having the main objective of becoming the best customer centric online
shopping portal now has become more presentable but not as much as Myntra.
Ease-of-Use and Convenience –
When it comes to ease of use and convenience, Flipkart does have a very appreciable
and convenient way for the typical customer. Log on to the Amazon India website and
all you find is a confusing set of links. You do not understand where to click and
where to not. Besides, if a user wants to order something at Amazon India, let's say a
book, he cannot do it just like that. One needs to have a user account at Amazon,
separately registered by the user. This kind of rudeness is something, which the
Flipkart, Myntra and Snapdeal people haven't shown. If you have a Facebook or
Google account, all you need to do is use your credentials, feed in the details and
place your order. There is no need to create a special Flipkart, Myntra and Snapdeal
account separately for the same, Amazon has a lot of stuffs Enclaved like Prime
Membership and a lot of more confusing traps which Flipkart choses to avoid.
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Same Day Delivery –
Recently after its entry into the Indian retail sphere, Amazon India came out with
something called 'same day delivery'. According to this plan, if you are a customer
and are so desperate to get the products you ordered that you want them delivered on
the same day, you can enjoy this facility. All you have to do is pay an extra fee of Rs.
99. But recently, even Flipkart, Myntra and Snapdeal launched the same feature;
however the better bet here is because you have to shell out Rs. 9 less. You need to
place your order before 6 pm and the order will be delivered to you within the same
day. If however you place your order (on Flipkart) after 6 pm, your product(s) will be
delivered only the next day. So, when comparing Amazon, Snapdeal, Myntra and
Flipkart on same day delivery services, they all offer pretty much good service.
Delivery Manners –
There's a subtle change in the manner of delivery of both the companies. Let's say you
order two things – a book and a movie DVD. It may be possible that you receive your
book the next day by Amazon and the DVD may arrive a few days later if the seller
takes more time to ship it. However, the same is not usually true with Flipkart. What
Flipkart will do is – it will ship the two products together, in the same package and
will most likely make you wait. While some favor Flipart's shipping habits, the others
believe Amazon India does it better. Some may like the responsibility Amazon takes
by shipping the product as soon as it can reach the customers; some believe Flipkart
understands how a person expects his products to come all together, keeping things
simple. While some say that Flipkart does this to save its expense on shipping the
package, some opine that Amazon too saves its expense by avoiding any midway
intervention in the delivery process. Myntra on the other hand deliver according to the
shipments so say if in one order there are 3 products and all 3 are coming from
different warehouse then anyhow it may send each product separately as there will be
3 shipment Id’s and 3 of them may then vary on delivery schedule.
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DATA ANALYSIS
To conduct the research analysis we enclaved a coupon based sample survey where
in, on the successful filling of the survey the target population will get some excited
Coupons to avail on Myntra.com.
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No. Of People under target population:
Myntra Amazon Flipkart Snapdeal
User experience
app/website
19 10 3 0
Competitive pricing
of products
13 12 4 3
Online deals and
discounts
18 5 5 4
Delivery of product
on/before promised
date
14 11 6 1
Diversity in selection 14 14 4 0
Faster delivery
options (SDD/NDD)
15 11 6 0
Order tracking 21 6 5 0
Delivery executive
behavior
14 12 5 1
Easy payment options 15 10 7 0
Easy cancellation
policy
15 11 5 1
Online/Offline
promotion and
advertisement
20 7 5 0
Ease of return 14 14 3 1
Ease of exchange 20 11 1 0
Refund process 14 13 5 0
Warranty
policies/Card
11 15 6 0
Contact Us options 16 13 2 1
Sufficient FAQ's 17 10 5 0
Customer care
experience
16 14 2 0
Feedback response 16 12 3 1
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CONCLUSION
In terms of complete online shopping experience, Myntra and Amazon have got better
reviews than Snapdeal and Flipkart. So far it has been seen that Myntra and Amazon
has successfully proved to be more customer centric online shopping portals than
Snapdeal and Flipkart. Myntra subsequently has given better deals and discounts to
the customers .The delivery standards have also proved to be top notched. Myntra and
Amazon provide Diversified variety and selection options to the customer and provide
more flexibility in payments and cancellation options. One of the most important
thing that differentiate the shopping experience offline and online is the after sale
services provided by the online shopping portals, giving customers an option to
exchange/Return the product and get the refund for the same so as to gain there trust
on online shopping. According to the survey, results show that Myntra and Amazon
have been more successful in providing better after sale services to their customers.
When is comes to customer care options Myntra and Amazon provides easy access to
customers in terms of 24*7 available customer contact option and makes sure that
each customer when tries to get in touch with them gets the best possible resolution to
there problems. Amazon being the first one to tap the button in the field of online
retailer ship is no doubt more experienced but it has taken years for the amazon to
finally earn profit. On the other side Myntra enclaving since 2007, in a very short
span has managed to become India’s largest online store. Further Amazon provides
some extra benefits to the customers like Amazon Prime, Online Chat facility and toll
free customer call options. On the other hand Flipkart and Snapdeal have been
successful in better presentation but still needs to work on providing better deals and
discounts also on providing more variety to its customers. Other thing where these
two companies lack is on restock of “out of stock” products. Myntra’s recent
enclavation on Try and deliver (Earlier know as Try on delivery- TOD) has given it
an extra ordinary competitive edge as it saves both the customers time and the
scalability for return/exchange of the desired products.
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SUGGESTIONS
The research conducted helped on analyzing the performance and noting the strengths
and weaknesses of the organization and assessing what must be done to improve. So
far it can be seen that Myntra has done exceptionally good when it comes to setting a
fashion trend amongst the general public, but I would like to give some suggestions
that I feel as a customer would make the online shopping experience at Myntra a little
more better:
Some additional facilities for 5 Star customers like Amazon prime concept
etc.(Priority access during Weekly/Monthly/Season sales)
Exchange not only for size but even for color
Toll free customer care facility
24*7 Chat assistance facility as primitively during sales as customers have to
wait for a very long time on IVR to get connected to one of our executives.
E-mail /SMS Notification on the restock of those products in the wish list
which have gone out of stock earlier.
Easy and hassle free delivery according to customers convenience. (Extension
of pin code serviceability of Myntra logistics)
