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Is Flipkart promoting its competitor?

By Roshan Anand on 20 Comments / 6507 views

I was checking the jewellery category on Flipkart when I saw the Bluestone.com Ad on their website.

There are 2 things which are important in this Ad. First, bluestone.com website is mentioned instead of just Bluestone logo which may prompt customers to visit bluestone.com and purchase from there itself. One may argue that people would prefer to buy it from Flipkart instead of Bluestone as Flipkart is a much bigger brand, but there is a catch which is discussed below.

Now when I click on the Ad, it displays Bluestone products on Flipkart’s website as shown below.

Here comes the catch, second part of the Ad. In the Ad, it was mentioned that the discount is 15% but on Flipkart, Bluestone sells most of its product at 10% discount. So, basically a customer can save 5% if they buy from Bluestone.com. Since, jewellery are high ticket products, 5% is a big amount.

This led to me visiting Bluestone website to check the same. Mind you, I had never visited Bluestone.com before. I found that Bluestone has more than 0.4 million likes on their FB page, have experienced founders and investors in Accel Partners and Saama Capital. Clearly, Bluestone is not a small player and is trying to build its credibility in the minds of the buyers and with time, move the buyers from Flipkart website to Bluestone which would better their margin.

So, Is Flipkart indirectly helping Bluestone build its credibility by promoting them on their website?

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20 Comments

  1. Hi,
    Are you sure you have no plugin installed which is doing this. As per my knowledge, flipkart has NO banners on their site below their header.

    https://www.flipkart.com/search?q=jewellery&as=on&as-show=on&otracker=start&as-pos=2_q

  2. Hey Roshan, you have raised a valid & interesting point. BlueStone will surely get some extra visitors because of the visibility it receives on FlipKart. If that’s the case, why is FlipKart still promoting & listing their products? Here’s what I think:

    • People trust FlipKart and they are not yet sure if BlueStone can be trusted or not. So in 90% of the cases, anybody who wants to make the purchase will make it through FK. Once they receive their products through FK and are happy with the quality of product, next time they may directly purchase from BlueStone.

    • Prices on FK for all the products from BS are lower when compared to the prices on same products on BS’s own portal. You may get similar price on BS’s site too when you use their discount vouchers and offers. But still, at first glance, they are lower on FK’s site.

    • Accountability – Because of the seller ratings/feedback system, the buyer are doubly convinced that the sellers may not try to do something stupid which might hamper their feedback %. 

    So in effect, FK is not losing anything and only gaining. FK is a marketplace and it cannot be biased towards existing niche online players because in the end, it is these new age niche players who understand the online market well and are aware of customers high standards for service & quality. That in turn helps FK carry forward its name in service and delivery.

    We too are an online diamond jewellery brand called KuberBox and we are present on FK too. We generally list all our products for 14K gold prices and SI-HI quality diamonds on FK’s site, whereas on our KuberBox.com customers have the option to chose gold purity (18K or 14K) and Diamond Quality as per their budget & preferences. 

  3. No, it’s not the plugin. FK promotes the good deals on its site from its sellers. Go to the page through Women > Jewellery and you will see another set of banners from FK’s jewellery vendors.

  4. Flipkart is a market place.

  5. I think this happened because possibly Flipkart is part of Google Display Network. And this is the best way to market your business. If your competitor is part of Google Display Network, You will get more benefit with lesser cost, because Banner ads of any particular website is really expensive and using Google Display Ads are much cheaper than that.

  6. When you select any brand for jewellery, you’ll get an Ad .. I have not installed any plugin ..

  7. I don’t think it’s Google Display Ads as they would have mentioned “Ads by Google” on the Ads 

  8. Flipkart is now a marketplace, and they are displaying pages from its own market, inside their search results.. no big deal! They are inter-relating the products and increasing CTRs.. a very good move. Both BlueStone and Flipkart are being benefited.. good for the industry 🙂

  9. Is bluestone paying for traffic generated from FK. because no one simply puts other brand banner

  10. If customers buys from Flipkart, then both Flipkart and Bluestone gets benefited. But, if the customer makes the purchase from Bluestone.com, then obviously Flipkart loses its share of profits.

    Good for the industry for sure but not for Flipkart.

  11. Did i read Accel as Investor? Then flipkart and bluestone most probably have a strategic partnership, thanks to their common investors. i would not be surprised if flipkart acquires bluestone soon. 

  12. Both the companies are backed by ACCEL Partners.So, Maybe this is their Internal strategy or something like that.

  14. Totally agree with Sourav Lodha’s inputs and Thanks to some wonderful answers.  

    That ad is a part of Google Double Click. (Refer the URL mentioned on the bottom of the image)

    DoubleClick Ad Exchange is a real-time marketplace partnered with the Google Display Network for buying and selling advertising. That is its a marketplace for ads. Publishers and advertisers have their respective accounts on doubleclick. 

    In this case bluestone is the advertiser who has selected FK brand to display their ads. So whenever you click the FK jewellery page, bluestone ad is displayed. When you click on the ad, the landing page is the flipkart page itself but results filtered by Bluestone. That can be set by the bluestone when creating the ad. Now as Sourav said accountability and trust are the two factors that decide the purchase. As a normal customer I trust Flipkart more than bluestone. Also I can find some trusted reviews on Flipkart (atleast I can find some reviews) compared to Bluestone where there are no reviews at all. 

    I also tried purchasing the same ring on both the sites (without any discounts – BlueStone The Cosma Yellow Gold Diamond Ring). Flipkart is cheaper than bluestone by around Rs.1500. 

    There will be multiple Flipkart sellers bidding for the same category. The ad will be selected based on certain criteria like CTR, Max CPC, and also flipkart plays a role here. They might decide what runs where.. Its not about flipkart promoting competitors..its again Flipkart trying to promote itself via seller ads.. See reliance, chroma, tata all has their own shopping sites..but they are present in Flipkart/Amazon.. Why? Because people trust Flipkart and more shopping happens on Flipkart/Amazon compared to their websites. Thats why Flipkart/Amazon are marketplaces and the marketleaders.

    Hope this helps. I would love to know others views also.  

  15. Those are not the same products. They may look similar on first glance and but when you check carefully, their image itself is different. Further when you probe more, you will find even the gold and diamond weights differ. 

  16. Wow. Great insights Krishna. Didn’t know about DoubleClick. Need to give it a try now.

  17. Thanks Sourav for pointing out the gold/diamond variation. I checked for 18kt gold in bluestone and 14 in FK. Apologies. 

  18. Great insights Krishna, didn’t knew about this. I have couple of questions.

    1) Normally, the price of products on Bluestone should never be higher than on Flipkart given that Bluestone will have to pay a commission of around 7% (commission is around 7% for jewellery on Flipkart, may vary a little). This is possible only if Flipkart is paying for the difference of the amount which they wouldn’t. Then how is price higher on Bluestone puzzles me.

    2) True that FK is a better brand and consumers would prefer to buy from FK. But what if with time, Bluestone gets recognition as a trusted brand and the price on Bluestone is kept lower than on FLipkart. My question is – Does FK has any control on what is put on their website via google Ads? If yes, they should have allowed just ads which do not mentions website URL and the discount percent given by Bluestone.

  19. Hi Roshan, 

    Yes, Flipkart has control over the ads. That’s why they choose Double click as their advertising platform. Google just connects advertisers and publishers. Flipkart can decide which all ads to be displayed on their platform using double click. Otherwise chances are there that even ebay/amazon will run ads on Flipkart! 

    Regarding the price, there was a mistake. I don’t think Flipkart is cheaper compared to Bluestone. As Sourav mentioned I did not take into consideration the gold/diamond quality. 

  20. BlueStone.com has a very interesting business model of Just in Time manufacturing and delivery. And they have a no questions asked returns policy.

    Backed by one of the biggest names in the jewellery space, C Krishniah Chetty & Sons, and founded by Vidya Nataraj and Gaurav Singh Kushwaha in mid-2011.

    Nataraj grew her family business Landmark Ltd, one of India’s largest retail chains selling books and music, before its acquisition by TATA Trent.

    Kushwaha had founded Chakpak, part of which was sold to Flipkart a few years back. His former partner still works there.

    Definitely a team to watch out for.

    This is definitely a good opportunity for Bluestone to build their brand by piggybacking on the FK brand.

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