100% FDI in e-commerce – will prices fall?

On the 29^th March 2016, the Government of India allowed 100% FDI in Indian e-commerce firms. While there is reason to cheer about the fast-growing sector getting more access to much needed funds for fuelling growth, there are three interesting developments in the notification.

1. The Government has explicitly defined what is a marketplace model, as different from an inventory model.
2. The consequence of this definition means that marketplace ecommerce firms cannot have a single retailer selling more than 25% of the retailer’s sales.
3. The definition also means that the retailer cannot provide discounts and promotional offers on their own, directly or indirectly.

The impact of these three definitional changes would in the short run, require marketplace e-commerce firms to discontinue price discounts they offer directly or indirectly. Amazon’s promotional funding to sellers, PayTM’s cash back offers, or Flipkart’s big billion sale have to end. Will this mean they would stop offering discounts? I do not believe they will. They will find other ingenious ways of providing the customer with discounts, given that they would have access to larger source of funding through the FDI investments. More on that below.

It’s the sellers that matter

This definition of the marketplace model would clearly lead to interesting dynamics on the seller side. For instance, an SMB seller who would otherwise be listing his goods across multiple e-commerce companies would now be wooed by more and more marketplaces, as they seek to expand their base of sellers. Do you realize that the firm that owns the site www.amazon.in is actually called Amazon Seller Services India Pvt. Ltd.? In order to expand and sustain their broad base of sellers, these marketplaces would now have to offer discounts and freebies to the seller side, rather than the buyer side as it was apparent in all these years of growth. These seller-side offers would eventually translate into lower prices for buyers in two ways.

One, in the traditional sense of the word, the seller bargaining power would go up; sellers’ multi-homing costs (costs of simultaneously offering their products and services across multiple marketplaces) would come down; and the volumes would go up. Larger sellers therefore, would invest in technology to manage their multi-homing costs, automate a lot of processes, outsource specialised functions like last-mile delivery to focused service providers, and would grow their own sourcing networks. Smaller sellers on these marketplaces would have no incentive to be remain small, and would either get gobbled up in a consolidation game or become second-tier sellers to the larger sellers operating on the marketplace e-commerce retail. This consolidation and growth of sellers on the marketplace would result in lower costs through economies of scale and scope, which the seller would eventually pass on to the buyers.

Two, the consolidation of the seller market would lead to fierce competition across sellers; and the basis of competition between the sellers is likely to be only price. Other differentiators like product variety/ features and brand are likely to be owned by manufacturers/ marketers (like Samsung), whereas service differentiators like distribution network, logistics and related customer service are likely to be managed by the marketplace. The only bases of competition for the sellers to compete would be (a) optimisation of inventory to reap appropriate economies of scale and scope, (b) managing distributed inventory through accurate prediction and forecasting of demand and supply, and (c) reducing costs through faster inventory turns as well as leveraging their bargaining power with manufacturers as well as retailers/ ecommerce firms.

Good times are here to stay (for the consumers)!

So, in effect these regulations do not necessarily mean that the prices in the ecommerce retail would rise and match the offline prices. There may be small adjustments; but in the long run, the discounting would shift from the retailer to the supplier. And the consumer would continue to enjoy lower prices (offered by the sellers) along with superior customer service (provided by the retailer, as this would be the only basis of competition across  marketplace e-commerce competitors).

Author: Srinivasan R

Professor of Strategy at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. All views are personal. The views and opinions expressed here are of the author, and not those of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore; and are not intended to endorse, harm, malign, or defame any individual, group, or organisation. View all posts by Srinivasan R