The benefit of purchasing products online is that you get access to unique items, manufactured in different parts of the globe at fair prices and with discounts. And by utilizing the "Search" feature, to find what you want in terms of features, model or brand, online shopping has been made easy and attractive for people who rarely get the time to move from shop to shop.
Now, many of us believe that online shopping offers maximum discounts, and just like one Neekee Singh, a dedicated Mumbaikar, she believed that purchasing clothes online would save her loads of money because of the discounts offered. Well, this wasn't very true as Neekee later found out.
If you want to benefit from the discounts offered online, you have to know how to analyze them. One of the things that you could check out is the MRP, many online stores or even the manufacturing companies do not give out this information especially when it comes to apparel.
However, for other items such as electronics, the information is always available; products with the MRP displayed imply that the discount benefits the buyer. Sellers will, therefore, indicate the products "Original Price," "The Removed percentage" and the "Current Selling Price." When you come across this one, it will be in your best interest to calculate the discount.
Most brand stores do display the MRP'S, so you can always check for the items that you suspect to be offering high discounts. Remember offering discounts is a marketing strategy for online sellers, which makes their products move like hot cake. And this is where unscrupulous sellers benefit from the naivety of the unsuspecting buyers.
Neekee Singh runs an online shopping website, which offers affordable prices to its customers "The StyleCaret." She has always been a stylish online shopaholic, who was always in a hurry to buy online clothes with discounts. Well, we may argue that it is a way of saving money while not compromising on fashion.
Now here is the shocker, as Neekee was out shopping with her girl gang for some wedding outfits in the markets of Jaipur and Surat, she was met with a disturbing revelation. There was a big price margin between the online prices and the wholesale product price, yet so many people have invested their faith in the discounts offered by online shops, thinking that they are saving money.
Retailers offer discounts for various reasons and one is that they want to dispose of some of their old inventory or items that they have no plan of selling. They also use discounts to attract online traffic to their stores and most importantly is that genuine discounts build loyalty between the client and the retailer. And this is because of the quality of goods offered.
The high discounts offered by online shops did not sit well with Neekee and she went on a fact-finding mission, combing through the local markets, to understand what precipitated the price differences. It might interest you to know that companies don't just slap discounts on products without a well thought out plan.
For example, retail shops offer discounts with regard to the season such as the Hindu festival of "Diwali", or the Muslim celebrations of Idd. During these periods many electronic products are put on sale, while other exciting offers pop up, as the year ends in December or during the New Year in January.
New online companies also drive traffic to their stores by offering discounts and this they do via competitive pricing, not a very healthy strategy though. However, you need to know that retailers study the behavior of their customers before applying the discounts. When they launch a product in the market they already have a target customer.
So the discount will be determined by the type of clients that the stores already have, for example, if the clients don't have queries about the discounts, or if they are not price-conscious but attracted to the discounts. Then this information will help determine the percentage discount that would be put on products, which will also be attractive.
As discussed earlier finding MRP is not as easy, therefore, Neekee tackled the problem on the ground; she made friendships with some of the wholesalers and inquired about the price gaps in the offline and online products. Their response was quite startling as she discovered that the online retailers charged a margin of 20 to 30% on one sold product.
Thus the expensive prices despite the low prices with which the retailers purchased the goods in bulk. The experience led to the birth of "StyleCaret" and here Neekee offers buyers the actual price of products. Her aim was to offer the right price for clothes and charged a maximum of Rs 49 per product for the processing fees.
The company, therefore, offers the best prices for cloths in both genders. What's more, is that if anyone finds a cheaper price for the products that they sell, they then give it away for Rs 1. The company also runs other offers and one is that the first purchase buyers are given a 100% cashback points.
To enhance loyalty the company also appreciates its customers by sending them surprises on their birthdays. The birth dates are usually collected during email marketing where new clients fill in the voluntary opt-in forms. More interesting is that the surprise will most likely be an item that you viewed in their website or a product that has been laying in your cart for some time.
The inspiration behind the starting of this company was to prevent consumers from falling prey to big margin cuts; Neekee, therefore, designed all the companies' features with the buyer's interest at heart. StyleCaret's number one priority is client satisfaction, and with this guiding principle, they serve them with only the best.
Calculating discounts is a simple money-saving skill that anyone can adopt and apply it in retail outlets or even when you want to set rates for the services that you offer. The most basic method of calculating discount is by multiplying the original price of a product by the decimal form of the percentage, and to know the sale price of an item, just subtract the discount from the original buying price.
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