Backdrop: My wife was nagging me to iron the pile of clothes for the past few days and finally I gave in. Well to be honest… nobody was surprised if the iron broke in 2 pieces halfway during the excruciating manual labor process.
Anyways here I am 10pm on a friday evening surfing the net to find a replacement.
“I was looking for: Steam iron which is compatible to a 5A plug point and has a 2+m cord. Heavier the weight, more I would prefer it.”
I am surfing all the top online stores (flipkart, ebay, pepperfry & cromaretail). I must say that each and every one had published a 1 page long description of each of the 100+ different irons they were carrying, yet none of these store had the information I was looking for. Instead they would bombard me with more products than I could compare, various discounts, coupons, cashback schemes that would confuse me.
I bought my phone (Nokia Lumnia) in flipkart a month ago. Since this was a high value purchase of a fashion accessory: I went to a store, selected the best match (product, feature, price range, color, look, feel, size etc.) then compared online for the best price. I was OK to wait for 2 days for delivery because the discount was worth it. for a 1,000/- steam iron, I am unlikely going to do that.
Essentially I see steam irons as a commodity. As long as it is from a good brand, there is not much value add in spending hours doing the research about it. I wanted to shop online because of the promise of convenience that it offers and also to save me the time and energy to go to a physical store for this undifferentiated product.
Maybe you feel it is a rant…. but its a voice of a customer who is willing to pay a premium if a store could save him a trip to the store.
Categories
Useless e-commerce comparisions
street, Bengaluru South, Karnataka, India
4 replies on “Useless e-commerce comparisions”
1 – How did you manage to break an iron into half? What did you do, hulk out on it? Arrrr….Ankur angry!! Is it captured on pic/video?
2 – The moment you start saying things like “As long as it is from a good brand”, it stops being a commodity. It means that in practical terms, the product performance in case of competing brands does not have a significant variation.
Regarding the long product descriptions, I too find them less than useful in most of the cases and more of a page filler from the seller’s side to show how much knowledgeable they are about the product they are selling.
official version… i iron fell and the hot ironing base cracked in 2 pieces….. there are certain chores that i guy likes to avoid as long as he/she can.
about commodity… sometimes price itself is a feature… the cheapest iron costs 200-300 bucks…. but i am looking something in 1.5-2k range… there are about 5-6 renowned brand who i trust enough that it won’t electrocute me (in spite of my handling).
commodity because those 5-6 leading brands produce almost undifferentiated products in features, price, form factor etc. and as I mentioned before i am lazy because its not worth the time.
it is neither recurring, interesting or significant purchase
“OFFICIAL VERSION”. Send actual on SASS
mail kar de bhai…. phone ka data connection disconnect kar diya.. bahut mails aur interuptions ho rehe the