Product details

The case deliberates on Flipkart’s sales promotion event ‘BigBillion Day.’ This event was the first mega online retail sales promotion event in India. Catering to the Indian market in nearly seventy product categories, Flipkart was the largest online retail site in India. The company that had endeavoured to become the ‘Amazon of India,’ was valued much higher than the largest organised brick and mortar retail business in India. On October 6, 2014, the company organised a day long mega sales event, which was aggressively promoted through print, electronic and social media. The buzz paid off and the ‘BigBillion Day’ was reported to have received around one billion clicks. In addition, the company’s mobile application topped the charts of the iOS and Android app markets. Their ‘steal deals’ were sold out within five minutes of the opening of the event. What followed thereafter was a huge market backlash against the company. The complaints pivoted around frequent and long website crashes, abrupt price fluctuations, out-of-stock and sold-out status and auto-cancellation of orders. The competitors rushed in to encash the opportunity. Its competitor, Snapdeal, clocked almost an equal Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) of USD 100 million, as was targeted by Flipkart. The following day, a number of retailers met the Union Minister of India for Trade and Commerce and complained against the irrational discounts offered by the online retailer. The Ministry assured of an Enforcement Directorate (ED) investigation in this case. In the wake of these developments, this case provides students with an opportunity to understand and assess the planning and execution of an online sales promotion event.