For the upcoming festive season, Walmart-owned Flipkart will introduce a price lock feature where customers can pay a small deposit and ensure that a particular product, at a certain price, will be available for them later even if demand surges, the company's chief product and technology officer (CPTO) Jeyandran Venugopal said.
If availed, the feature will also shield customers from price fluctuations or stock outs which is typical during festive sales. One can draw parallels of the upcoming feature with what flight booking portals offer to customers. By a paying an amount upfront, flyers protect themselves from the repercussions that come along with an unprecedent surge in demand or flights being sold out, Flipkart hopes to offer similar services.
"During festive seasons, we have received feedback that products are sold out or unavailable within minutes and with the new price lock feature, people will be able to lock the inventory they need," Venugopal said at Walmart's Converge event on September 15.
The announcement comes at a time when e-commerce firms like Flipkart and Amazon are gearing up for an important festive season which typically begins around October ahead of Diwali.
Festive season sales are of particular importance because, cumulatively, they account for about 50 percent of the gross merchandise value (GMV) for e-commerce companies. The analysts at Redseer said such sales are poised to grow by up to 20 percent year-on-year, to touch Rs 90,000 crore.
Weeks before the sale kicks off, Flipkart also said that its seller base has now increased to 1.4 million, up from 1.1 million last year. During the event, Venugopal added that the e-commerce firm has also been increasing its focus on other customer services.
These include virtual trial rooms, customer-specific beauty and personal care (BPC) guidance among others. Flipkart had received feedback that most BPC products were generic but different skin tones and texture required different products, which it is now solving for.
"So we're also solving for this by asking customers to upload a selfie after which experts will suggest what products will work best for them according to their skin type," Venugopal said while adding that even Myntra, also a company owned by Walmart, was offering this feature now.
Moreover, Flipkart is also reworking its loyalty programme and website homepage, Venugopal said without revealing more details. The company is also improving its search feature to streamline what customers want, mostly done with the help of AI and large language models (LLM) as it gears for the festive season.
While Flipkart was increasingly adopting technology, it is also placing humans across the shopping journey to make the experience more personal. The company now places domain experts who help customers while making high value purchases because this is where customers abandon their carts the most.
Gen AI and more
Both Flipkart and its parent Walmart, a US-based retail giant, said the companies were heavily leveraging gen AI (generative artificial intelligence), machine learning (ML) and quantum computing to improve supply chains and that the all the emerging tech will together change how retail is done in the future.
"We had our Flipkart board meeting yesterday (September 14) in Singapore and the most discussed topic was Gen AI, we overshot our time but no one batted an eyelid...Gen AI is more important than ever now," Venugopal said at event on September 15.
Along with Gen AI, quantum computing and other emerging technologies, Flipkart will also leverage the Metaverse for shoppers ahead of the festive season, Venugopal said.
In the past, Flipkart has also launched SPOYL a gen Z focused shopping platform and a video shopping destination.
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