Car, bike manufacturers join Google's Great Online Shopping Festival

Google's three-day discount festival Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF), saw enthusiastic participation from even car and two-wheeler makers who offered attractive benefits and cash discounts to lure in customers.

At least nine car makers including leading companies like Mahindra & Mahindra and premium brands like Volkswagen and Nissan are offering discounts and other consumer benefits worth Rs 30,000 to Rs 142,000 through GOSF.

The companies were not there on the first day but came on board on the second day of GOSF.

While a number of companies like Ford India had limited their online offer only for the duration of the e-sale,  others like M&M had extended their 24-day offline discount scheme to the GOSF to maximise consumer reach.

Ford India had also demanded that consumers take the delivery of the vehicle before 31 December.

Renault Pulse, a hatchback from the French automaker, comes with a consumer benefit scheme of Rs 1,42,000 valid on bookings and deliveries made by 20 December, while the company's top selling sports utility vehicle Duster was also on offer at similar discounts for diesel variants through GOSF.

The tie-up with Google led customers directly to the vehicle manufacturer's website where they could get details of the discounts and benefits on offer and city-wise price data. Car makers are looking to the last day of GOSF to bring in more users to perk up sales in the lacklustre year.

In October, the passenger vehicle segment saw a dip of 8 per cent despite massive discounts which continued in November. The segment registered a growth of less than 3 per cent in the April-November period.

Meanwhile, with the GOSF in its third day, the search giant claimed that the response from customers had been a huge success, NDTV reported.

However, going by the comments posted on social networks

the actual sentiment was probably mixed.

The immediate sale of products was only one part of the impact of the even for offline retailers as they are known to hold sales of merchandise that was not moving fast to clear stock and to make space on their shelves for the next lot of products coming in.

Online sellers on their part had a different motive for such events to build buzz and awareness their stores, and to encourage people to actually shop online.

Quick deliveries, cash on delivery, and big deals meant that even one was typically not shopping online, it became hard to resist the temptation to shop online, even as one felt secure in the knowledge that no money was spent until one actually got the delivery of the product.