Flipkart has been in the news with their recent flash sales regarding the Xiaomi Mi 3 Android smartphones. The three flash sales have not gone down the good books of many fans. Many complained that they could not get their handsets booked during the flash sales. While most complained that they would get errors, some complained that the page never showed any available handset and showed out of stock messages, others complained that Flipkart and Xiaomi are running a scam. Though it may seem like it is a scam, it isn’t.
Xiaomi is a very well-known smartphone manufacturer in China, and all thanks to the MIUI custom Android operating system that they are respected for. The MIUI operating system is the main reason they have come into the smartphone manufacturing industry. Their main aim is to concentrate on their operating system distribution and the best way is to do it by offering their own smartphone.
Xiaomi entered the Indian market this year and has already taken the smartphone market by a storm by offering a powerful, yet affordable Android smartphone for the masses. They enrolled the online e-commerce giant, Flipkart, for a single point of sales. However, in the first three sales, a whopping 35,000 handsets were reported sold as soon as they opened their counters. The first sale witnessed 10,000 handsets being sold within 38 minutes, while the second and third flash sales witnessed 25,000 handsets vanishing from their inventory within 4 seconds and 2 seconds respectively.
Flipkart has catered to the smartphone brand’s fans in the country, but probably dealt the sale in a wrong manner. There was absolutely no transparency in the sales compared to the inventory. A whopping 3 lakh plus customers registered for the 35,000 handsets, only to have a sour feeling when they did not manage to get through. While those who managed to get one, others were left cribbing, with comments all over the social network and media sites.
Flipkart could have simply placed a strategy for the purchase so that their customers and Xiaomi fans are happy. Possibly a lottery system could have helped. One could register between the said dates, then Flipkart could have had a computerized lottery system, which would pick out ‘X’ number winners depending on the number of handsets for the sale. This list of winners could be put up on their website at a certain time with a link to buy on it. A time frame could be set up so that the customer can go and pay for it. After the time frame passes, if the customer does not claim his handset, the handsets could either be placed for the next sale, or Flipkart could have put up a waiting list for a luckier few. In this way, the deal would have been transparent and all visitors on the site could see that the handsets were distributed systematically.
Flipkart and Xiaomi could also have a pre-ordering scheme, where the customer could pay up a set amount and book the handset. This would create a proper inventory and Xiaomi could just go ahead an import the number of handsets required.
The confusion created due to a non-transparent flash sale will only cause Xiaomi and Flipkart to lose out on customers.
If you have a different strategy for a flash sale, why not put it up in the comments below.
The next Xiaomi Mi 3 sale is on August 12 and customers will have to register for the handset again, even though they did it the last three times.
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