In a recent incident of digital commerce crawling inside the traditional channel space, HP India started funneling end customers in South India, through www.hpshopping.in website where the customers booked and stocks were billed through Savex, its national distributor. We reliably learnt that the situation was put under scanner as HP soon put a tab on this.
Whether it is working through its own online presence such as hpshopping.in or placing products at Snapdeal or Amazon.in , this shows, the way global vendors like HP are playing around the online to customer model and how things will shape up in the near future.
As for this recent incident of online confrontation, HP partners and HP World showroom partners really are the ones who felt most of the heat as Savex was billing directly to the customer’s order received on hpshopping.in website.
The question is why should a reputed vendor like HP allow a National Distributor to go ahead and directly bill the customers taking the advantage of complete margin, what about the local channel partners who have done all their bit to ensure that they are stocking vendor products? why not the vendor utilize its true channel strength and funnel he order to local HP authorised dealer and get it billed from there. After all, this is how channel supposed to work. But over the recent past, such incidents are time and again raising doubts about the overall channel strategy and how and where online should come into play.
During this fiasco, on conditions of anonymity, one HP showroom partner said that if the same thing happens again, we will have a serious problem as we have invested our amount and stocks in the showroom and the benefit is taken directly by HP & ND. Is this fair?
Dinesh Shyam Sukha
Editor