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TRAVEL AND BOOKING

WEBSITES IN INDIA

Competitive Differentiation - To be or Not to be!

As all firms move online, it has become impending

for brands to differentiate themselves. Strategic

decisions such as whether to be present on new

media platforms (or) to be present only on platforms

that are widely populated (or) to build the largest

social network have become some of the most

impendent decisions and a daunting process when

it comes to finalizing one.

Source: stage2planning

Firms today have recognised the need of connecting with their customers online. Online

customer service and brand building is easy, cheap and extremely rewarding if done right.

The biggest challenge faced by firms today is how to align their corporate brand positioning

and extend it online while adapting to the changing industry trends.

These decisions are unavoidable and at times difficult to take, because if they fail to give the

expected results or if one of your moves backfires, the firm may even land up paying up few

million dollars and yet not be able to erase the digital footprint. In this light many firms who

have outsourced the operations are advised to bring back the operations in-house.

Travel & Ticket Booking Websites in India

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IRCTC receives close to 1.2 million daily visits and handles 180 million transactions every

year. Making it the largest e-commerce site in India focused on train & air ticketing business.

It is the only firm which is not present on any of the social media platforms. In 2013 it

launched e-commerce platform selling goods in partnership with Yebhi.com. The objective

was to become a one-stop e-tailing platform.

In India the adoption on new media transactions and methods of doing business has

generally been slow. Especially in the travel industry, it has been seen that over the last

decade consumers have slowly adopted ecommerce as the means of making decisions and

purchasing travel plans.

It is also observed that of the total ecommerce sales in India, travel alone makes up to three

quarters of it. According to a new report by eMarketer, “BRIC Travel Markets in Transition:

Trends Influence Overall Ecommerce”, during 2011-16, India’s annual growth rate would be

30.6%, making it the fastest growing online travel sales market.

Use of social media is mostly restricted to services-led initiatives such as reviews and

feedback which is, CRM processes substituting for not so good offline customer services by

sales and customer support personnel.

The success of travel and hospitality sector is purely based on customer experiences and

sharing of these experiences with other likeminded travellers. Sales in this industry is heavily

dependent on the referral system and hence social networking sites have paved way to huge

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opportunities for firms to tap on to. Travel is a social experience and hence this industry

becomes a qualified candidate for end-to-end social media integration.

Information Search and Planning

Source: Studio23

Let’s explore the typical process a customer undertakes right from searching for information

to making the payment using the services of one of the travel services providers online and

then identify the pain points of a customer that can be addressed through social media

services.

The very first step to plan a travel would be choosing the destination – Where to go.

Customers generally go through various review sites like Lonely Planet or start gathering

opinions from friends, family and colleagues. Else they have a search on Wikipedia on the

best places to visit in the given budget and the time frame.

The next step would be making flight/train/bus/hotel booking and hence going through

travel portals which provide options and a level of comfort and service. At this stage the

customer is looking for the best deals and a loyalty memberships and possible rewards that

can be redeemed in some cases are additional factors that affect the search and the

decision making process. Simultaneously an itinerary is planned and the finally the service

that is most suitable and recommended. The last step is processing the payment.

Websites that are most frequently visited at each stage are: Destination Search: Lonely planet, Wikipedia, incredible India, trip advisor, travel blogs etc. Booking, Planning, Payment: Make my trip, Cleartrip, redBus, Goibibo, Expedia, Yatra, IRCTC Means of communication: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, email, online chat, telephone Let’s look at some of the most commonly used websites in India used by customers to make their travel plans and payments.

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Travelling is all about social experience

One of the very first name that customers recall while planning, searching for destinations and booking for travel and accommodation is Makemytrip.com! So why is Makemytrip so popular among customers? Founded in 2000, Makemytrip is one of Indian’s favourite online travel companies. It has been one of the few start ups to have recognised the changing trends in the industry and adapt online marketing opportunities to engage customers and make travel experiences a social experience. They are one of the brands to have realised that most of the purchases online happen through referrals and recommendations by friends, family and in this case other likeminded travellers. The company’s presence only on the major networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube indicates that they are very clear of their objective of using social media for marketing. Today it has become a one stop shop for all travellers, no matter at which stage of decision making process they are in (Information seeking, planning, comparing, evaluating, recommending, payment etc.). Their presence on Facebook began in 2009 and today they have over 1,184,742 fans and 78,232 people talking about them. They have successfully built a strong community of likeminded fellow travellers who interact, recommend and rate destinations, travel experience, services at the hotel or the travel planner. Creating brand advocates with minimum investment. Another reason why Makemytrip tops this list is that they are one of the few brands that keeps up to the changing trends in the industry and integrates it almost immediately. For instant one of the most prominent examples is that of moving on to Pinterest and promoting their presence on Pinterest on Facebook to showcase that they are present where their customers are.

Doing things right

Calculating social media ROI is not an easy task. However, brands today are becoming

smart in setting measurable objectives.

As brands gain better insight into conversations and revenue and cost saving campaigns,

half the battle is won if brands are able to freeze on their online presence strategy. That is if

brands today can define their social media objective and are able to get their online portfolio

right then they can decrease their customer acquisition costs, customer retention costs,

administrative overheads, routine labour costs, shared creative and production costs etc.

Also firms would benefit by increased marketing productivity and profits.

Let us look at other top online travel and ticket booking companies that have also

successfully adapted social media for ecommerce in India. Let’s also seek answers to some

of the most common challenges faced by brands today:

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Should they be present on all popular channels or select few channels only?

If they have to select few channels, which channels should they choose?

Once a brand is present on the top three social media platforms then what next? Should

they further strengthen their community in the existing platforms or diversify further to newer

platforms to gain first mover advantage?

Be there where your competition dares not to be!

Yatra.com was started in 2006. One of the earliest entrants on social media and yet they

have not been able to bag the number one position. As per Alexa’s ranking it is positioned

#4 after Makemytrip and Cleartrip who have entered the social media space three years later

and followed a similar strategy for building fan following.

Yatra.com is one of the only travel and ticketing company to have embraced newer platforms

such as Pinterest to build a community and gain a first mover advantage on a platform that

acts as a personalized media platform where users can collect and organize images of your

interest.

Source: Pinterest.com, as on September 2013

Expedia on the other hand, being an American based company founded in 1996 ranks the

least. The parent company owns several global brands; they operate 100 branded points of

sale in more than 60 countries. In India Expedia’s sale to point is through Expedia.co.in

(Expedia India).

While it has a weak social media presence in India, it has been very successful in capturing

target audience attention and interest through Google+ and YouTube. With 31% growth in

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fan following on Google+ and the second largest number of views on YouTube in this

industry they are the only company to have gained access and take advantage of this

medium in India.

Google+ has been very popular in US, it has been the second largest social media platform

followed by Facebook. The interest of users of social networking sites over the period

compared to changes in interest in the travel category shows that Google+ was perceived as

a good social networking medium in the year 2011 and the fad died by the mid of the same

year. Since then Google+ has not be very popular in India.

Google Trends data analysis shows that Facebook and YouTube have been the most

effective and the favourite channels of users in this industry. While Twitter, Pinterest and

Google+ battle out for better attention span and popularity among users.

Source: Google Trends, as on September 2013

Goibibo is an excellent example of how the firm has exploited the popular and most viewed

platform and built community and fan following in those platforms. Being laggards in

adopting social media in December, 2009 it has the second largest fan following on

Facebook with 1,277,907 fans and 78,139 people talking about it. It is the only travel and

ticketing website to have received the maximum views on YouTube. After the acquisition of

Rebus.com Goibibo now also offers bus ticketing option. Redbus.com still operating

independently is yet to gain popularity and grab its piece of pie on the social networking

front.

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Goibibo has followed a similar strategy as Makemytrip when it comes to engaging

customers. Both the brands promote exclusive offers, suggest destinations, interact with

customers by conducting polls, encourage and invite submissions from customers on best

memories and experiences etc. through their Facebook page. They ensure customers are

constantly engaged and updated with latest information in the industry.

Goibibo also does YouTube promotions successfully through their new bus and new hotel

TV commercials. YouTube is powerful platform and the only one known to hold audiences’

attention for a longer period of time. With funny, witty and engaging video, Goibibo uses

YouTube channels to extend its TV commercial footage and audience views.

Source: YouTube.com, as on September 2013

However, what the page lacks is the efficient usage of the space provided and the

opportunity to strategize and use YouTube to promote and build the brand through this

channel. YouTube like Facebook or Twitter provides an opportunity for brands to upload a

cover image promoting the brand, special offers and packages on their social networks.

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The Golden Nugget: Choose the right social media mix

Today all social media networks are trying to imitate each other and offer the same set of

features and opportunities to customers. Like Facebook has also adopted the #tags from

Twitter, Twitter today allows users to upload a cover image etc.

What now becomes important for brands is that they analyse their social media objective,

identify the channel that would help them meet their objectives the best and then adopt a

strategy to increase audience and fan following in the long term.

The trick here is not just to be customer centric but to know which social strategy works

best during which customer phase. Companies must know when to use an orchestrated

combination of social strategies by mapping programs against the marketing funnel. Apart

from all these the most important element of choosing the right social media mix is to have

long term thinking. Most brands have a short term vision when they launch their social

campaigns. Growing fans, followers and building a community online is cost intensive; hence

the plan must be focused on long term objectives rather than short term. Customers have

been on web before the brands and will remain on web after the brands have left as well.

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Brand storytelling

on social media

This chapter deals with the strategic issues faced by most of the brands in the lifestyle product

category that are spoiled with choices and confused about how they should deploy social media

strategy.

Today it is no longer about the type of

media or the message from the marketing

department on social media but it’s about

what consumers are talking about your

brand also called earned media. Studies

show users share their experiences on

Twitter and Facebook and four out of five

share their story through pictures and

videos.

Source: The Economic Times

This indicates that brands have an opportunity to tap into the power of channels such as vine,

Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube etc.

Earned media is when customers talk and share about a brand on various platforms. The value of

earned media is based on trust and authenticity of the content shared by the customer. Hence we

see that pictures and videos have become a powerful means for telling your story. Companies

should effectively use new channels such as Vine, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube to share

information and not just use them as yet another channel of promoting advertisement. All you need

to do is offer a product or share an experience that customers can relate to and are willing to share

it with their friends and official network.

One of the brands which have entered this space successfully is Yebhi.com. With 1881 followers

today the company has been able to engage its audience and establish as the best lifestyle brand on

Pinterest. Brands have to differentiate themselves by providing value that cannot be replicated by

other. It is a very difficult task in social media and may not always be about product or service

differentiation. Today it’s all about providing customer centric service and connecting with your

audiences in the right way. Take the simple idea of initiating a game of Tambola to engage your

audiences, it takes you back to those memorable days when one use to have get together’s with

friends and enjoy this game.

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Source: Pinterest.com

This shows that how brands today can still find that differentiating factor and gain

competitive advantage.

While other brands such as Jabong and Myntra rank ahead of the Yebhi in terms of traffic on

website and fan following on Facebook and Twitter, they have failed to grab attention of

audiences on the fast growing new media.

Studies indicate that storytelling through videos grab the largest attention span of a reader.

Lifestyle brands for products such as apparels, footwear, baby products, home improvement

products, cosmetics, perfumes and other products must target their customers through such

highly engaging media. Babyoye.com founded in June 2010, caters to the new born child

essentials segment and connects with mothers by providing quick tips and counselling

sessions on YouTube.

Unlike other brands Babyoye does not use YouTube to promote their advertisement or

promotional offers/campaign but provides educational information to mothers who are

seeking for some quick do-it-by-yourself tips. Today they have over 1,578 subscribers and

more than 89,04,128 views on YouTube. The videos uploaded are no longer than half a

minute, the longest one being that of one minute and forty one seconds. Engaging the

audience in a quick watch and providing the right message and brand positioning in just 30

seconds is more of an art than science on social media. Starting about a year ago they have

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26 videos uploaded and the views of each video being as high as 16,243 (approximately) in

just one year.

Another great example of how brands can move towards earned media is that of

Jabong.com on Facebook. It has been able to gain only 16,00,918 fans which is about

32,11,576 fans less than yepme.com however, Jabong is the only brand in this segment that

allows customers to give feedback, complaint and complement about the product or services

availed. This establishes credibility, transparency and a brand image that a message that

company is willing to listen and change, which are the key objectives for being present on

social network.

So what is yepme.com doing right to have over 33 lakh fans 10% of them talking about them

on Facebook?

It is not easy to say. It can be the way this brand has successfully advertised and promoted

the brand online or integrated social media with their marketing strategy. It could also be that

Yepme.com’s social strategy is to become the largest lifestyle product community to be able

to expand further on other networks. So what is the secret sauce, we do not know. But what

we know is Yepme has the highest number of relative number of fan.

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What about the Engagement Rate?

We find that the engagement rate which is defined as overall active fans. Calculated as:

Engagement Rate = PTAT (People Talking About This)/Fans

41,650

3,88,493

4,68,657

2,94,219

29,407

33,71,594

2,53,959

5,71,946

9,11,865

14,94,452

12,43,887

15,01,372

16,00,918

277

7,306

4,614

18,761

1,057

3,02,893

7,574

4,422

5,448

3,062

5,182

15,471

14,512

0 10,00,000 20,00,000 30,00,000 40,00,000

perfume2order.com

firstcry.com

babyoye.com

fabfurnish.com

localbanya.com

yepme.com

Zovi.com

Inkfruit.com

lenskart.com

yebhi.com

Fashionandyou.com

Myntra.com

Jabong.com

FB Talking about this

FB Likes

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Yepme takes the top brand position with the highest engagement rate. But is this the correct

way of measuring the engagement rate? Not really, it does not include some forms of

interactions such as playing the video, photo display or click on the web link. And hence the

number of people who engaged with your page which includes any click has to be included.

Modifying the formula to:

Engagement Rate = Engaged Users/Fans

While Facebook is an important platform for brands to focus on, Twitter is yet another

platform that cannot be missed.

1 2

1 6

4 9

3 1

1 0

0 1

1

0 2 4 6 8 10

perfume2order.com

babyoye.com

localbanya.com

Zovi.com

lenskart.com

Fashionandyou.com

Jabong.com Engagement Rate

275

390

706

761

770

1,594

2,238

4,838

5,328

9,825

12,905

13,069

20,926

0 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 25,000

perfume2order.com

firstcry.com

babyoye.com

fabfurnish.com

localbanya.com

yepme.com

Zovi.com

Inkfruit.com

lenskart.com

yebhi.com

Fashionandyou.com

Myntra.com

Jabong.com

Twitter Followers

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Jabong.com hits the top stop with over 20,900 followers.

From the above analysis we see that different brands have adapted different strategies on

social media platforms. As brands recognise that social communities are growing more and

more crowded due to mass adoption it is becoming harder to grab user attention and garner

it. Today company can make an impact only by integrating paid tools and appointing a

change agent.

In 2009, Forrester defined owned media as a channel owned by a brand such as a website

etc., paid media as advertising etc. that is purchased by the brand to leverage the channel,

and earned media as the word of mouth (WOM) that happens around the brand, turning the

customer into the channel.

The Golden Nugget: It is no more about choosing the right social media mix. It is about how

engaged the audience is with your content on the channel making interactivity and

appropriate measurements absolutely critical.

Source: Preview Networks Blog

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SOCIAL INSIGHTS

Flipkart still is the big daddy of all when it comes to sales. However, when it comes to social

media, we see smaller players like Junglee.com and Pepperfry.com are asserting their

dominance. Launched in 2011, Pepperfry and Junglee have gained the highest engagement

ratio of 8.9% and 3.7% respectively. The content strategy of Pepperfry seems to have

worked for them. They are still building and fighting for a space in the top three e-commerce

website online as they have low customer base as of now, however, interactions and

customer engagement ratio has proved that though a small player, if you have a strong

social media presence it impacts your direct sales positively.

Fig: Fans on Facebook

Let us also look at the website traffic of these top 10 players. We see that Ebay, Flipkart,

Groupon, Snapdeal have the highest traffic, while Homeshop18 and Junglee.com fight for

the 5th position. What is interesting to see is that Junglee.com (Amazon’s Indian e-commerce

site) has been a late entrant and captured a large market share in such a short span of time.

Within just two years it has been able to deliver value and capture customer mindshare. With

the Alexa rank of 84 preceded by Homeshop18, Snapdeal and Flipkart at 81, 18 and 10

respectively, it is amongst the top 5 e-commerce website in India.

1,96,987

0

24,08,151

2,34,720

21,99,132

10,78,396

14,77,167

49,58,966

10,23,254

75,354

32,66,911

0 10,00,000 20,00,000 30,00,000 40,00,000 50,00,000 60,00,000

naaptol.com

Dealsandyou.com

ebay.in (non indian)

groupon.co.in

Flipkart.com

homeshop18.com

Snapdeal.com

shoppersstop.com

infibeam.com

futurebazaar.com

junglee.com

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Fig: Website traffic comparison

Source: Alexa.com

So will Junglee.com overtake Flipkart and Ebay? Only time will answer this.

In January 2012 after a long waiting amazon.com announced its entry in the Indian retail

market with a new website jungle.com. Junglee entered the market with a new business

model where it directs customers to both online and offline vendors listed on Junglee. It is

not involved in any buying or selling in India. On the other hand, Flipkart owns the largest

distribution channel in this industry, which caters to all the needs of a customer.

As of now Flipkart and Snapdeal have not listed themselves on Junglee.com as vendors. But

what is to be watched is how long they can stay off the list!

Source: Alexa, as on Jan 2012

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Flipkart’s social media strategy is that it has no strategy. It uses social channels to connect

with customers like one connects with friends on social networks. It is known that many a

times it’s Sachin Bansal, founder Flipkart interacting with customers on Twitter. They do not

believe in any code of conduct on social media, they believe that interaction with customers

should be based on common sense and no rules defined. But why do experts then insists

on defining social media policy for an organization (especially Start-ups)?

Take a look at the recent controversy between Homeshop18.com and its customer who was

a Flipkart employee.

Source: Twipic - http://twitpic.com/8k8pxt

Here we see a customer who has ordered a product from Homeshop18 and cancelled the

order after the product has been shipped. The customer goes on to abuse Homeshop18 on

Twitter. Homeshop18 points out that he is Flipkart’s employee to Flipkart and expects

Flipkart to apologize as well for the use of abusive language.

The question that arises here is if it’s right for Homeshop18 to point it to Flipkart and involve

a brand and expect for an apology for its employee’s actions? Are employers responsible for

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employee social media action in work hours? Shouldn’t there be some rules and code of

conduct for employees on social media?

While many experts believe brands must create a social media policy, brands still believe

that social media interactions are more personal and should not be restricted. It is about how

an organization wants to manage their customers and competitors as well. As the e-

commerce environment matures in India brands will have to find a solution to such dilemmas

soon.

Flipkart recently launched a campaign deploying social media as an active and primary

medium and breaking the clutter in the advertisement industry. They previewed their new

campaign to their dedicated 50 lakh users before broadcasting it on Television. They took

feedback and also tweaked their media plan as per Ravi Arora, Sr. VP Marketing,

Flipkart.com

The brand has used their social media influence and reach innovatively. One of the few

examples on how brands can identify their social media power and build a strong customer

network that would in turn contribute to their growth.

"Initially when we were working on the first campaign the idea was to have a treatment that

was fresh and also to build trust for the category - and who better than children to help build

trust. The idea worked and the brand has continued to use the same set of characters and

extending the storyline with the central thought. So much so that now using the kids as

adults is a language that everyone identifies as a Flipkart idea" - Kartik Iyer, chief executive

officer, Happy (the agency behind the campaign)

"Many users have actually got back to us saying that they are happy at having been treated

as more than just a 'like' or 'fan' statistic." - Ravi Arora, Sr. VP Marketing, Flipkart.com

Source: Economic Times, September 2012

As the e-commerce is maturing in India, brands have a lot of catching up to do with respect

to adopting best practices when it comes to leveraging social media strategy for their

business. Most of the brands including Flipkart, Ebay and Homeshop18 do not have their

most engaging social channel integrated to their website. Take the example of Ebay, they

have over 5.5 million views and 12643 subscribers on their YouTube channel, one of the

largest subscriber base in this industry and yet has not integrated the channel to its website.

Brands can leverage the customer interactions and engagement investments by directly or

indirectly channelizing their viewers to their website which is the key medium to drive sales

and business. Take another example of Groupon.com, a global leader in local commerce,

making it easy for people around the world to search and discover great businesses at

unbeatable prices caters to many global locations and hence needs to have different touch

points at different locations. It has an excellent presence on Pinterest where it maintains

separate profiles (pinners) for all locations. However, the challenge is how to integrate all

these pages into the main Groupon Page?

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While most of us are aware of Flipkart, Snapdeal, Homeshop18, Shoppersstop,

FutureBazaar, Ebay, Groupon, Junglee, Naaptol, Letsbuy, Tradus.in, Bag it Today,

IndiaPlaza, Bestylish etc. when it comes to online purchase; only few of us would recognize

names such as Wear Your Opinion (WYO), Fernsnpetals.com and Zoomin.com. The future

of Indian e-commerce is moving towards to providing niche products and services to

customers, especially on the demand services and products is what smaller brands are

aiming at providing.

Have a look at one of the customer experience at WYO. The post shows how a new small

player can differentiate itself from others and customize their engagement with customers.

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One of the buyers from WYO goes on to write a blog on his experience about purchase from

WYO and how he was surprised by their service when compared to his experience with

other well established vendors such as Ebay or Flipkart.

Read the full story here:

http://techcorplegal.com/Blog_Technology_Law_Business_Research/2013/04/15/how-to-

keep-customers-happy-in-online-business-e-commerce-case-study-wear-your-opinion-wyo/

Golden Nugget: Look beyond share of mind.

“A brand that captures your mind gains behaviour. A brand that captures our hearts gains

commitment” - Scott Talgo, Brand Strategist.

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