A

PROJECT REPORT
ON
ADERVTISING STRATEGIES ON
FLIPKART EFFECT ON THEIR STUDENTS

APEX COLLEGE OF MANAGEMENT AND COMPUTER

APPLICATION

Under the Guidance of: Submitted By

MR GURVINDER SINGH GURSIMRAN KAUR

 STUDENT DECLARATION

This is to declare that project titled advertising strategie on flipkart and effect on their
student

The project was executed during the summer break after the fourth semster of BBA under
the supervision of Mr GURVINDER SINGH

Further, I declared that this project is my original work and the analysis and the findings
are for academic purpose only. This project has not been presented in any seminar or
submitted elsewhere for the award of any degree or diploma.

GURSIMRAN KAUR
BBA 4TH SEM
 Acknowledgement

The satisfaction, which accompanies the successful completion of the project, is incomplete
without the mention of a few names. We take this opportunity to acknowledge the efforts of
the many individuals who helped us make this project possible.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to our Project Mentor MR GURVINDER
SINGH for giving us an opportunity to work under her esteemed guidance which helped us
to improve upon our lacunae during the project research. We are very grateful to her for
providing us with every possible opportunity & freedom to learn and explore. We are deeply
indebted to her for her suggestions, constant inspiration and encouragement.

We would also like to thank all our batch mates and students of 4 t h semester for their support
during data collection.
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The concept of e-commerce is downloading at a fairly rapid pace in the psyche of

the Indian consumer. In the metros, shortage of time is a big driver for online
shopping. On the other hand, accessibility to a variety of products makes audiences
from smaller towns and cities opt for the online route. Major retailers face
challenges in stocking their stores adequately. Often, customers are unable to
purchase items of their choice, thus prompting them to resort to e-retailers.

Flipkart has accorded a lot of importance in trust building exercise that is why it has
a strong Customer Support Team which helps the customers with the website
guidance and resolving issues.

Flipkart uses its in-house logistics (FKL) as well as third party logistics (3PL)
services as the logistics is one of the most important for a success of any
ecommerce venture. Along with the logistics, reverse logistics of Flipkart is also
well developed with a 30 day return policy and flipkart bearing courier charges for
returned products.

Flipkart when it started employed the consignment model of procurement as it was

the most risk free way to operate but then they changed to Inventory model to
ensure superior delivery times. But with foreign direct investment (FDI) favoring
the marketplace model in April2013, Flipkart changed its business model to
marketplace model.

WS Retail a pet project of Flipkart now handles the inventory and warehouse
management. Flipkart has continued to fare very well in terms of the delivery time
because of their developed supply chain management and dedicated customer
support team to ensure customer delight. This causes them to build a lot of slack
into their existing systems causing higher costs at several points in the supply chain.
How they address this challenge is what will determine their future success.
 Contents:

S.No. Particulars
1 Introduction
2 Flipkart
s
3
4 Flipkarts Success Mantra
5 Future Road Map
6 Threats in future
7 Research Methodology
8 Research Design
9 Secondary Data analysis
Advertisements used in newspapers and magazines

Online Advertising

Flipkart on Twitter and Facebook

10 Primary data analysis

11 Findings
12 Suggestions
13 References
 INTRODUCTION

Things are easier said than done! To realize our dreams and that also in such a grand
manner is really a tough task. The founders of Flipkart have probably conquered their
dreams with the amazing success of Flipkart. Flipkart is something which has really opened
up the Indian e-commerce market and that also in a big way.
Flipkart was co-founded by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal in Oct 2007. Both are
graduates from IIT-Delhi and have prior work experience in Amazon.com They both were
solid coders and wanted to open a portal that compared different e-commerce websites, but
there were hardly any such sites in India and they decided to give birth to their own e-
commerce venture
- Flipkart.com
Thus was born Flipkart in Oct 2007 with an initial investment of 4 lac (co-founders
savings). It was never going to be easy since India has had bad past experiences with e-
commerce trading. It was not an easy segment to break into, people were very
particular in paying money for something which they had not seen and received. The trust
was missing in the Indian customers. So what Flipkart had to do was to instill trust and faith
in their customers. And they did exactly the same, will discuss more on how they did so later
in the post.
Flipkart began with selling books, since books are easy to procure, target market which
reads books is in abundance, books provide more margin, are easy to pack and deliver, do
not get damaged in transit and most importantly books are not very expensive, so the
amount of money a customer has to spend to try out one's service for one time is very
minimal. Flipkart sold numbers only books for the first two years.
Flipkart started with the consignment model (procurement based on demand) i.e. they
had ties with 2 distributors in Bangalore, whenever a customer ordered a book, they used to
personally procure the book from the dealer, pack the book in their office and then courier
the same. In the initial months the founder's personal cell numbers used to be the
customer support. So, in the start they tried their best to provide good service, focus on the
website - easy to browse and order and hassle-free, and strove hard to resolve any customer
issues. Since there were not any established players in the market, this allowed t hem a lot
of space to grow, and they did in fact grew very rapidly.
Flipkart had a revenue of 4 crore in FY 2008 - 2009, 20 crore in FY 2009 - 2010, 75 crore
in FY 2010 - 2011, and the revenue for FY 2011 - 2012 which ends on 31 Mar 2012 is
expected to be 500 crore. This is indeed a massive growth. The company targets
revenues of 5000 crore by 2015.
 The company started from 2 employees and now has around 4500
employees.
Flipkart started with consignment model as discussed above, since most of the
customer issues like delivery delays etc. result from procurement model, the company
started opening its own warehouses as it started getting more investments. The company
opened its first warehouse in Bangalore and later on opened warehouses in Delhi, Kolkatta
and Mumbai. Today the company works with more than 500 suppliers. As on date more than
80% orders of Flipkart are handled via warehouses which help in quick and efficient service.
A humble beginning from books, Flipkart now has a gamut of products ranging from: Cell
phones, laptops, computers, cameras, games, music, audio players, TV's, healthcare
products, washing machines etc. etc. Still, Flipkart derives around 50% of its revenue
from selling books online. Flipkart is the Indian market leader in selling books both offline
and online, it enjoys an online share of around 80%. The electronic items have a large
number of players like Naaptol, Letsbuy, Indiaplaza, Tradus, Infibeam, Yebhi etc. The
electronic market share is distributed among them in different unknown proportions.
India has around 13.5 crore internet users today where as the number of homes with
Cable and Satellite (C&S) television is 10.5 crore. The expected internet users will reach a
figure of
30 crore by 2014 and C&S homes are expected to be 14 crore by 2014. Thus India has a
tremendous internet growth and with the customers getting accustomed to e-commerce, the
future of e-commerce sector is definitely rosy. An approximated 25 lac people have
transacted online this year, the number is all set to increase with time.
Also to mention most of the Flipkart customers use internet from PC's/Laptops to
order goods. The use of mobile internet is very less at the moment, but with the advent
of smart phones the use of mobile internet for e-commerce transactions will soar with time.
India has 8 crore mobile net users at the moment, the number is expected to swell to 22.5
crore by 2014.
Flipkart Success Mantra
Great customer service: Flipkart users are more satisfied than that of
their competitors. Great customer service has been its hallmark.
Easy to use website, hassle free payment system: The user interface is sleek and
easy to use.
Cash on delivery/Card on delivery mode of payment: This has been a
major instrument in Flipkarts success. Almost 60% of its sales happen through this
mode. Cash on delivery created trust in the minds of Indian customers who were
always weary of making payments online.
Focused on user experience: Every other e-commerce site, tried to cram the
maximum of amount of information possible into every single page whereas Flipkart
focused on providing only the relevant info

Future Road Map

They aim at 10 times growth and eyes at $ 1Billion sales by 2015.

They will look at bigger investments in their supply chain and technology.
Investment will be made in large warehouses and increased automation of
their process, so that the product is not delayed.
They intend to enter in to various new categories and expand their current
categories as well.

Everything except for groceries and automobiles will be available on Flipkart in

future.

To go further in the value chain, Flipkart is looking at associations with a larger

number of suppliers and partners, both nationally and internationally
To go further in the value chain, Flipkart is looking at associations with a
larger number of suppliers and partners, both nationally and internationally.
 Threats in future:

There are no major foreseeable threats in the future. The company has built a great brand
name, they just have to maintain and enhance the same. Need to keep introducing more
products, adapting to the changing needs of the customer with time. The entry of
Amazon.com in 2012 in the Indian e-commerce space has been cited as a big challenge to
Flipkart. However Flipkart is a respected Brand name in India and should be able to compete
with Amazon. Amazon being a very big company can bring in serious competition
to Flipkart, since Amazon can bear more losses in the beginning to gain customer base.
But again Indian market is growing at a rapid pace as access to internet increases and people
become more aware of e-commerce sites and start trusting the same; hence Indian market is
sufficiently big at-least for these two giants to co-exist beneficially.
 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

1-started by two iit graduates (earlier employed with aamzon)

2 -added other products like media,electronic,personal and health care.

3- boasts 100% growth every quarter since founded

4- india largest online booksellers with over 11.5 million titles in offer

5-sells nearly 20 products per minutes

S
cope of the study
 Research Methodology

Research Objectives

To study the advertising strategies used by Flipkart.

To analyze the factors and their effect on the students in BHU.

Research Design

The research design is descriptive in nature.

Sample Design

Population: All consumers of Flipkart

Sampling Frame: Rudrapur City

Sampling Unit: Individual students

Sample Size: 150 (Male: 120, Female: 30)

Sampling technique: Non-probability sampling, Convenience Sampling

Location: Rudrapur

Duration: 3 weeks

Data Collection method: Survey and General Observations

Instrument: Questionnaire

Data Collection

Primary data collected with the help of survey conducted on BHU students using
a questionnaire.

Secondary data present on the websites.

 Research Plan
Study of Advertising strategies used by Flipkart to
position itself

Designing the questionnaire

Collection of primary data

Analysis and Interpretation of data

Findings
 Secondary Data Analysis:

Advertisements Used in Newspapers and Magazines:

Newspaper advertising works on the fundamental of building trust and confidence with the
readers.

Newspapers have the greatest impact because of the following

reasons:

1. Experts say the greater the exposure of the advertisement, the longer is the period of its
impact among the readers. Therefore experts feel if an advertisement stays in the memory
of a consumer for a longer time, chances are quite probable that he might opt for purchasing
or availing your services as and when required. This counts for higher sales and
brand awareness.

2. A newspaper reader is so involved in his reading that sometimes the content in

the advertisements creates an emotional impact on him. It is this power of being able to
evoke an emotional response with the reader that goes in favor of newspaper advertising.

3. In other media, especially online media, people get perturbed by the distractions in
the form of pop-ups and other advertisement forms that keep flashing on and off the
screen. In fact experts points out that instead of having any favorable impact, these ads
serve to distract the readers. However newspapers, point out experts, involves a focused
reading where there are no disturbing and unwanted flashes of advertisements. As there is no
distance between the reader and the story it seems that the reader actually undergoes all the
emotions in the story himself, leading to increase in the trust factor. Taking advantage
of this trust quotient, advertisers cash on newspapers to send their messages loud and clear
among the readers.

Hence, Flipkart has used advertisements in newspapers and magazines which are colorful,
bright; most of the images consist of kids, and have clear messages. Here are some of the
advertisements used by Flipkart in Newspapers and Magazines.
 O
nline Advertising

The number of internet users is on a rapid rise worldwide and is used by people of all age
and types. Internet has become a major medium for communication, entertainment and is in
the process of replacing traditional entertainment, promo products, and informative
Medias. Some businesses are finding that handing out a promo product such as pens,
business cards, and mugs are too costly and yield little results. Likewise, traditional
marketing forms such as television, radio, newspaper, magazines, etc., are becoming a thing
of the past.

Internet has also become a major and effective medium for advertising and it has be
predicted that the online advertising and marketing is soon going to replace the
advertising through traditional medias such as television, radio, newspaper and magazines.
I have picked around
10 advantages of online advertising (not in that order) when compared with the traditional
offline advertising.

1) Wider Coverage

The online advertising gives your ads a wider coverage and this globally wider
coverage helps in making your advertisements reach more audiences, which may ultimately
help you in getting better results through your online advertising campaign.

2) Targeted Audiences when compared with offline advertising, online advertising always
helps you to reach the targeted audience and this helps in making your campaign
more profitable and getting more relevant leads.

3) Affordable

Another main advantage of online advertising or marketing is the much affordable

price when compared with the traditional advertising costs. With a much lesser cost
you can advertise on the net for a wider range of audience and geographical locations.

4) Easy to Track and Measure Conversion

Measurability and easiness to track the conversion makes online advertising miles ahead on
the traditional advertising methods. A lot of effective analytics tools are available to
measure online advertising campaigns which help in more improvisation of the ads.
5) Speed

Online advertising is much faster than offline advertising and you can start sending out your
ads to a wider audience, the moment you start your advertising campaign.

6) Informative

In online advertising, the advertiser is able to convey more details about the advertisement
to the audience and that too at relatively low cost. Most of the online advertising campaigns
are composed of a clickable link to a specific landing page, where users get more
information about the product mentioned in the ad.

7) Flexible Payment

Payment flexibility is another added advantage of online advertising and marketing. In

offline advertising you need to pay the full amount to the advertising agency irrespective of
the results. But in online advertising there is the flexibility of paying for only qualified
leads, clicks or impressions.

8) Better ROI

Since online advertising is mainly focused on performance based payment, you ROI is sure
to be far better when compared with offline advertising.

9) Easy Audience Engagement

Online advertisement makes is easy for the audience to engage with your ads or products. As
an advertiser we would be able to get more feedback from the audience and thereby
improve the quality of our ads going forward.

10) Better Branding

Any form of advertising helps in improving the branding and online advertising stands
a notch high in improving the branding of your company, service or product.

Flipkart being an online mega store advertises its products and the offers in different internet
sites, screenshots of which are being shown below
 Tweet
s about Flipkart

Flipkart stays connected with its users via twitter, they answer most of the queries put up
by their customers and carefully evaluate all the suggestions which were posted in the
twitter which keeps the customers happy and in turn keep the management of Flipkart
happy. Some of the tweets are shown below:
 PRIMARY DATA ANALYSIS AND INTREPRETATIONS:

Number of Respondents and their distribution:

Male: Chart Title

120
Male Female
Female:
30

20%

80
%

Respondant Male Female

120 30

We took a survey of 120 respondents, where number of female was 30 and that of male were
rd
120. These students were of International Hostel, Triveni Hostel, SNPG Hostel, 1st and 3
semester students of FMS, BHU.

1. How often do you purchase from Flipkart?

Always--Often--Occasionally---Rarely--Never
80
68
70
60
50 24 22
40 28
30 0 0
20
8
10 0 0 0
0

Male Female
Frequency of purchase done by Male is higher in comparison to female. Most of the male
students purchase occasionally while most of the female students purchase rarely
from Flipkart.
 2. How did you come to know about Flipkart?

a) Friends b) Television c) Newspapers and Magazines d) Advertisements on Websites e)

Others if any please Specify

68
70
60
50
40
40 10
30 18 2 0 0 0 0
20 1
10 2
0

Male
Female

Most of the students came to know about Flipkart through friends followed by television
and online advertisements. This proves that word of mouth strategy by Flipkart is the
most successful means of making people aware about them and their products. This success
can only be gained through satisfied customers who act as advocates for your products.

3. What category of products do you purchase from

Flipkart?

a) Books and Stationary b) Electronic Items c) Mobile and accessories d) Health and Beauty
products e) Music, movies and posters f) Cameras g) Watches h) Others(Please specify)
..

Chart
120 Title
100
80
60 Male
40
20
Female
0
 Male students purchase more categories of products then female students.

Books and stationery, Electronic items, Mobile & accessories, cameras, watches
and others (bags, belts, etc.) are purchased more.

Books & stationery and electronics items are more famous among the students.

4. My frequency of purchase has increased/decreased/remained unchanged since my

first purchase.

70
60
50
Increased
40 Remain Unchanged
30 Decreased
20
10
0
Male
Female

The frequency of purchase for most of the male students has increased while it has
remained unchanged for most of the female students.

5. I sometimes dont purchase a certain category of products because of:

(a)Delivery time (b) I cant touch and experience product online (c) Replacement time (d)
Price (e) Habit of purchasing from open market (f) Lack of immediate service (g) Lack
of trust (h) Others (please specify if any)
12
0
10
0
80 Male
60
40
20 Female
0

Delivery time, inability to touch and experience the product online and lack of trust are
the major impediments for students of both genders on doing online shopping.

6. How often does the Flipkart promotional scheme on websites influence you to
visit their site?

Always-----Often-----Occasionally-----Rarely-----Never

How often does the Flipkart promotional schemes on diferent websites

influence you to visit their
Axis Title

site? 90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Always Ofte Occasionall Rarely Never
Male 0 n
18 y 84 8 10

Promotional schemes influence more male students than female students to visit the
website of Flipkart. The frequency of visit is still very less as most of the male students
occasionally visit Flpikart while incase of female students it is rare.

7. How often does the product review influence your

decision?
 Always-----Often-----Occasionally-----Rarely-----Never
How often does the product review influence your decision?
90
Axis Title

80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Always Ofte Occasionally Rarely Neve
Male 22 n
83 11 1 3r

Male students more often go through the product review before making their decision to
purchase than female students who occasionally read the product review before taking their
purchase decision. Product review is a kind of word of mouth strategy where product users
leave their review on their experiences with Flipkart.

8. Kindly rate the importance of these parameters on your buying

decision:
1 (Least important)-2-3-4-5(Most
important)

Importance of factors for students

that Flipkart
focuses
on:
Axis Title

6.00
5.00
4.00
3.00
2.00
1.00
0.00
Ease to
Cash Qualit Repla Price Rang access
on y
of c
emen and ofe Warra Packa Delive
Delive
Home and
delive t
produ Guara Disco Produ n
ty gi
ng r
y
r y c n u c analyz Time
y t tee nt ts
produ
MEAN(Male) 4.48 4.75 4.93 3.96 4.06 4.92 4.25 3.11 2.97 4.49
MEAN(Femal 4.63 4.10 4.97 3.43 3.97 4.20 4.07 3.13 2.90 4.13
e)

Almost all the factors that Flipkart is focusing onto are of high importance to the students in
BHU, while packaging and warranty have average importance in the decision making before
any online purchase they make. Home delivery and quality of product has the maximum
importance while packaging has the least importance for the students before making a
purchase.
 9. Kindly rate the importance of these parameters on your level o f satisfaction for
the same.
(5:Satisfied; 4: somewhat satisfied; 3: average; 2: somewhat dissatisfied; 1: dissatisfied)
Satisfaction
Level
Axis Title

6
5
4
3
2 Ease to
1
0

Cash
Home
Qualit Repla Price Rang acces
on y
of c
emen and e
of s
and Warra Packa Delive
Delive t n gi r
delive produ Guara Disco Produ analyz ty ng y
y
r
y tc n
tee u
nt c
ts e
produ Time
c
ts
Mean(Male) 5 5 4.65 3.12 4.47 3.82 2.68 4.86 4.81 2.56
Mean(Fema 4.93 4.30 3.93 3.87 3.43 3.67 4.07 3.43 4.27 3.63
le)
Almost all the factors that Flipkart is focusing onto are of high importance to the students in
BHU, and Flipkart has been successful at imparting them and creating satisfied
customers. The only area of concern for Flipkart is the delivery time where both male
and female students seem dissatisfied.
 EFFECTIVENESS OF TELEVISION COMMERCIALS OF FLIPKART

Acto
5.00
4.90
rs
4.80
4.70 4.73 4.7
4.60 4.78 4.6 5 4.89
4.50 5
4.40 4.77
4.45
4.30 4.6 4.2 Mean
4.20 1 4.40
4.10 8
4.00
3.90

Humo
6.00 r
5.00
4.00 4.0
3.97 3.81
3.00 9 4.95 4.78 4.65 4.63 4.02
2.00 4.69 4.66 Mean
1.00
0.00

Message
6.00
5.00
4.00 4.1 4.79 4.78 4.70 4.54 4.78 3.7
3.00 5 3.3
4.43 4.45 4
2.00 1
1.00 Mean
0.00

4.00
3.80
3.20 4.0
3
4.0
3 M
4.40 3.60 4.1 u
4.20 3.40 1
 si 4.20 4.24 3.5
5
c 4.11

3
.
7 3.75 3.8
5 3 Mean

Story
6.00
5.00
4.00 4.2 4.77 4.78 4.85 4.87 4.30
3.00 3 4.95 4.84 4.09
3.0
2.00
6 Mean
1.00
0.00

Overall Effectiveness
6.00
5.00
4.79 4.88
4.00 4.67 4.77 4.75
5.09
4. 4.15 3.5
3.00 2 1
3 3.96
2.00 Mean
1.00
0.00

Ten different television commercials launched by Flipkart were shown to the

respondents and were asked to rate them on six different parameters to judge the
effectiveness of the commercials over the students of BHU. All the six parameters
viz. Actor, humor, message, music, story and overall effectiveness were rated high on
the likert scale as excellent or good. The ten commercials shown were carrying 10
different messages that Flipkart serves wit h. The messages that these commercials
carried were cash on delivery, home delivery, warranty, packaging, replacement
guarantee, warranty, quality of product, price and discount, ease to access and
analyze and range of products. The effectiveness of the commercials proves that the
 messages that Flipkart wanted to convey were very well presented and positioned
into the prospects mind.
They used children in their commercials as actors in order to convey the message and
change the mindset of Indian consumers that online shopping is safe and more
convenient. Flipkart used the tagline No kidding, No worries and kids as actors to
convey that If a kid can do it, why cant you?
Findings
Frequency of purchase is more among
Men.
Word of mouth was more influential in promotion as many people was made aware by
their friends.
Most of the students are satisfied with the services of flipkart and are willing to
recommend them to make purchases from flipkart.
Except packaging and warranty, all others are considered important in the decision
making of online purchases.
Almost all the factors that Flipkart is focusing onto are of high importance to the students
in
BHU
The commercials used by Flipkart are effective enough to convey the message since the
ads are interesting enough to gain attention and position itself into the prospects mind.
Flipkart
question
Suggestions:
Flipkart has successfully placed itself into the prospects mind making it the Indias largest
online store with huge range of products. But Flipkart still needs to work on their core
competence that is books and stationery items.
With the entry of Amazon.com it will be a huge competitive market for Flipkart and
hence will have to position itself better, as we still see that huge percentage of females are
still unaware of Flipkart. Those female who purchase, has a very less frequency
which has remained unchanged. Therefore they need to get aggressive at providing
better services which can be fulfilled by reducing the delivery time, selling second hand
products which will increase consumers affordability much more and enhance penetration
into the market.
They can even have their retail stores which can give an access to consumers to feel and
analyze the products, which will help them win the consumers faith.
Price will still be a factor as amazon being a huge company will use its economies of scale
to remove their competitors from the market; therefore they need to be more competitive on
that aspect. Be very focused on consumers and build amazing experiences for the customers.
 References:
Wikipedia
www.flipkart.com
www.youtube.com
www.thehindu.com/arts/magazine/article3290735.ec
e en.wikipedia.org/wiki/flipkart
forbesindia.com/blog/editors-blog/flipkart-ceo-responds-to-our-cover-story/
www.vccircle.co m/news/2012/08/14/ news-roundup-flipkart-raise-100m-new-
investors in.linkedin.com/company/flipkart.com
www.startupdunia.co m/interview-wit h-flipkart -founder-binny-bansal-
776 www.facebook.com/flipkart
www.hindustant imes.com/techno logy/industrytrend/how-flipkart-broke-indias-
online- shopping-inertia/so-article1-780440.aspx
businesstoday.intoday.in/story/flipkart-online-shopping-e-commerce-order-
books- online/1/20797.html
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cu11bw30su
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeu1hmxdd-a
Images from Google Images.com
Commercials from Youtube.com