Vendors issue advisory on e-commerce

The thunder speed at which e-commerce has grown and gripped the market has become a cause of concern for many. It's not only the channel partners who are suffering and partly blaming vendors for remaining quiet. But vendors are suffering equally.

As we all know what makes shelf life of a product long enough is not only its quality but reliability on the brand. Reliability involves layers and years of working towards brand building which online shopping space is giving a huge blow to.

The high fluctuation in prices every now and then has led to high discontent in customers. However, nobody is fending off the reality that e-commerce is here to stay in the name of comfort, discounts and door step delivery.

S Rajendaran, chief marketing officer, Acer India said, "It's going to hurt the entire eco-system which includes customers". He agreed that prices on which these portals are selling products is at times not even close to the price at what vendors sell them. The business model then seems irrational and raises a question on evaluation of firms involved".

Though the idea could be killing the competition or being a dominant force but that will take long time. Hitesh Shah, channels head, BlackBerry India said, "Though online portals are talk of the town but still BlackBerry gets only 6% business from it. The percentage in the next two years is expected to grow at 20%."

Brands like BlackBerry, Acer, Epson have started taking steps. Among these Epson and Acer have put advisory notes on their websites to caution their customers. BlackBerry in order to maintain the satisfaction level of their channel partners make sure that their products are sold on the same price online at which they are available offline.