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Why don’t wholesalers/retailers list their best prices online?

By Sanket Saraf on 17 Comments / 2856 views

 

I spent a frustrating 3 hours trying to get the best deal for a laptop (SVE15123) at Lamington road (Mumbai). I got a discount of Rs. 2550 or 7% off MRP (with VAT bill, company warranty, seal packed, bag) after visiting over 10 shops and a lot of haggling. Which had me wondering, was it all worth it??

I tried calling shops up before going and did get a few quotes. But the prices changed when i went there physically. I didn’t buy online, since I was unsure about the portal or the rates were much higher than the shops. Also I could see the laptop and get immediate delivery from a shop.

The shop made about 0.05% or Rs. 175. He didn’t stock it and just bought it from another shop and sold it to me. Pretty easy for 30 minutes work.

So, has anyone come across a price listing portal for shops selling to retail customers?

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17 Comments

  1. Have you tried any of these:

    https://www.pricecheckindia.com/

    https://www.pricedekho.com/

    https://www.naaptol.com/

    https://www.pricesbolo.com/

    Being in the comparison shopping engine space for the US market for over 10 years…. if merchants can just get their act together in India and update their pricing on the web REGULARLY, this will be a huge market for India, and make it alot easier for CSE’s to provide up to date information to customers.

    Any entrepreneurs interested in launching a price comparison engine for India???
    Got the perfect domain ready, and wheels are turning:  Price.in

    Best,

    Indy

  2. Dear Indy,

    Thanks for the reply, cheapest site was pricecheck (snapdeal) @ 33888.
    I bought mine for 32550.

    I think launching an engine will require a lot of groundwork, similar to what justdial/google places has done. Besides, they just visited once and keep sending mailers/calls frequently.

    What I can’t figure out, even if we launch something like this, won’t the merchants themselves become self-aware and launch their individual sites? Why would they pay us to do the job, they would just update their site every day instead of their account.

    Cheers,

    Sanket

  3. Not yet but the govt can make them do in one stroke of legislation.

  4. For most electronic products the prices drop rapidly after a few weeks for various reasons. When a new version comes in or if an alternative product comes up the existing product prices can drop. However, this trend may not be equal across all retailers or wholesalers. For instance an ipod may still be a superhit in small towns while in large cities its not a big deal.

    When you visit different portals online you will be able to save time, energy and cost of travel, however you will still find price differences. Each player (wholesaler or retailer) both offline and online use different tactics and strategies to do business. Even online players will not easily reveal their costs or trade secrets.

  5. http://www.price.in

    Hey Sanket – Recently put something together that allows users to compare prices through all major shopping engines in India. 

    Some of the websites you can currently compare prices from include:
    Flipkart Shopmania Infibeam Adexmart PriceCheckIndia Rediff Shopping Sulekha Deals Naaptol Ebay India Tradus Homeshop18 SaveRupiya Saholic IndiaVarta PriceDekho Olx CompareRaja Egully Shopclues CompareTheBazaar FutureBazaar Amazon India Compare India CromaRetail IndiaPlaza GreenDust

    The site also provides a travel comparison service where you can compare prices on Hotels, Airfare and Car Rentals.

    Coming soon – apparel & mobile pricing !!! – stay tuned
    If you would like to add your store – you know how to reach me!

    DISCLAIMER* – Site’s in Beta .. looking for its Baap – please excuse any inconsistencies…

    2013 – lets make it happen .in !

  6. Wish it was all available at one look. Now i need to click each website’s link.

  7. There are many price comparison portals in India. Not sure how accurate is their data – 

    https://www.mysmartprice.com/

    https://compareraja.com

    https://pricebaba.com

    https://simplibuy.in

  8. Sure, its an extra click but you don’t have to enter your travel details on each site or search for the product on each site.  Simply enter your information on http://www.price.in and all your information carries over to the search engines you have checkmarked so you don’t have to enter it on each one individually.

    But that is part of the evolution process Sanket – is to be able to provide all the information in one place with an easy to remember domain relevant to the business model ‘price’ (as you may know, im pretty big on domain relevancy).   Appreciate the feedback.

    Some of the Indian cse’s are doing a great job, however the objective with price.in is to compare prices not only from stores but even the different comparison shopping engines out there.   Being able to provide users with the option to compare on travel (hotels, airfare & car rentals worldwide) sets it apart from others.

    So I used your example and searched SVE15123 and couldn’t locate it on any of the stores listed or the comparison engines.  Curious what you ended up finally paying for it and if you could provide more specs on it…  i5 or i3 processor? RAM?  HD?  or even better a link to your product online 🙂

    Thanks!

    .indy

  9. Hey Swapnil – noted and all have been added – now instead of going to each site and searching, you can just go to one site http://www.price.in, checkmark the companies you mentioned above,  ‘simpli’ search and get results from all the sites with your search results parsed through.
    Thanks for the suggestions and any others stores or cse’s that you feel need to be added – plz feel free to direct it over!

  10. Hi Sanket,

    I understand your pain. This is the same exact problem i faced but i faced this problem in Chennai. Since then, i have quit my job and started my venture – CrawlFish.http://www.crawlfish.in provides price comparison service across all online shopping portals and retails shops in your city. i.e If you want to buy “Apple Iphone 5” in adyar, Chennai, we list all retail shops in adyar,chennai that would sell this product with best price, special offers,replacement guarantee, door delivery etc. Initially we have started this in Chennai. Soon we would expand to other cities. That said we are one of the few location based price search engine that has been started in India. Definitely this is looking promising.

    Having said,  we are yet to add Laptops and we are yet to list shops in Mumbai. So we can not help you at present. But in near future we should make it.

    Cheers,

    Vijay

  11. https://www.flipkart.com/sony-vaio-e15123cn-laptop-3rd-gen-ci3-2gb-500gb-win8/p/itmdeshwuhvn6gym?pid=COMDETKEV2PMZC9M&ref=de8153a9-4f1a-4469-b4f3-4c43acc00572&srno=t_2&otracker=from-search&query=sony%20vaio%2015123

    Sorry about not spelling out the model. It is Sony Vaio E (series) 15123.

    I’m buying another one for my sis at the same price.
    Unless of course you can tell me if anyone offers it cheaper! 🙂

  12. Hey Vijay!

    Your website looks like the real deal!
    Much impressed with the price finder idea. Can you spin it off and give it a gifting/flowers angle? That’s where “budget” comes in also.

    Few Qs:
    How do you manage to update prices for every SKU-retailer?
    How do you generate revenue? Will I get bottom price if I go without your coupon?
    Can you add a “sort by” location/price/votes button? Also, when was the last update made?
    Can you integrate an online search also? So you’d be only place i would have to look.

    BTW, i’m also hunting for a DSLR and a cam and facing the same pain. Get to Mumbai fast!!

    Future customer,
    Cheers,
    Sanket

  13. Thanks Sanket for your reply. Made my day 🙂

    Can you spin it off and give it a gifting/flowers angle? That’s where “budget” comes in also. – we will consider this

    How do you manage to update prices for every SKU-retailer? –  We have a Merchant Login, a CRM through which a vendor can add/edit/delete a product and can also update the price using their login credentials. Also we make sure that price are updated regularly by interfacing with vendors with our Vendor Engagement team.

    How do you generate revenue? Will I get bottom price if I go without your coupon? – The catch here is, using CrawlFish service, you can get the best price(not necessarily it means the least price), special offers, door delivery option,COD etc from the retailers in your city. (Yes,just like an online shopping portal, these retailers offer whole lot of options). If you are not going to that shop through CrawlFish, chance is that you may not get it at the same or lesser price. You may end up paying more. having said, there are chances for you to make a better bargain with the vendor and get it even lesser than the one it is mentioned in our website. But we make sure that you dont end up paying more than what is mentioned in our website.

    Can you add a “sort by” location/price/votes button? Also, when was the last update made? – Sure. Thanks  a ton for this great suggestion. We will implement it asap. Right now we give an option to filter your shops based in location. 

    Can you integrate an online search also? So you’d be only place i would have to look.- Yes. That is our idea too. A one stop shop. Even now we have listed online shopping portals. That is we have a hybrid model where in we want to be one stop shop for both your Online shopping portal price comparison and also local shops price comparison. Right now we have 9 online shopping portals in our price comparison service.

    Also to add to it, we also offer our price comparison service through our phone service so as to reach a larger audience.

    Once again, Thanks a ton for your review.

    Sure. Bangalore,Hyderabad,Mumbai are the cities where we want to be soon.

    Cheers,

    Vijay

  14. Hey , check out https://www.price-hunt.com/,  where you can search for any product sold in India.

    It is into real time price search across various online stores from India , unlike other price comparison sites and provides one click search for a product to find the best price at the moment .Very user-friendly and also has features like “Deal of the day” and “Offers & Coupons” to benefit the user and make their shopping experience easy and more rewarding.

    http://www.price-hunt.com

  15. U can check out another price comparison website https://www.price-hunt.com/ , which fetches real-time and updated data from all major online stores unlike many other sites which shows old data and gives lowest price and best deal of a product.

  16. anupam,

    it’s always nice to mention that you’re the founder of price hunt when you recommend it? 🙂

    https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/request-for-genuine-feedback-www-price-hunt-com

  17. Hello,

    I have released an app for deals & offers in Pune. We are most trying to list the deals at very reasonable prices from local dealors, manufacturers, wholesalers. We are focusing on apparel, furniture, accessories, etc. App has been released, but making some changes for new look. You can check the app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mtetno.locaal   Also provide feedback n suggestions to improve.

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