Online shopping in India seems to be in boom with people getting more attracted towards discounted prices offered by them. This has negatively affected the offline retailers or the brick and mortar ones, as they can’t offer such heavy discounts on products. Major electronic brands are taking several measures stop the increasing tilt towards online shopping as its now effecting their authorized retailers along with their own margins. After Lenovo and Toshiba warned their users from buying its products from online retailers, it now Canon India issuing an advisory against buying from unauthorized online retailers.
Canon India has now listed on their website (Canon India) its authorized partners who can sell its products online. Among the authorised partners WS Retail Pvt. Ltd. on Flipkart, Park Network Pvt. Ltd and Varay Image Runner on EBay India and Varay Image Runners on Amazon India can only sell Canon printers, they are not authorized to sell Canon Cameras through their store. Only Net Distribution Services Private Limited on Canon Image Store can sell both printers and camera online, all other online retailers selling Canon products may be not authorized sellers and people buying from them poses a risk.
The main reason behind this issue is that, Indian online retailers tend to sell the products at a cheaper rate than the original MRP set by a company with discounts and offers. This may have caused issues for Canon’s original resellers mainly the brick and mortar ones who can’t match up with this discounts.
Canon India is also considering providing longer warranty periods for products bought from offline stores to negate the steep discounts offered by online retailers. People buying from offline retailers can get up to 15 months of warranty against 12 months warranty on all products brought through online.
“We are considering separate warranties, for example a one year warranty for online and 15 months for offline.The problem is that the online retailers are providing heavy discounts that destroy the price point of offline traders.” commented said Alok Bharadwaj, executive vice-president at Canon India.
Will this actions from major electronic manufacturers effect the exponentially growing Indian online shopping industry. We have to wait and see.