ASANSOL. At the onset of Durgotsav, the online market has done record business. Sales reached around Rs 24,000 crore in the first two days alone. However, an atmosphere of frustration and grief prevails among businessmen ranging from large city markets to rural areas. Massive discounts and unfair pricing by e-commerce companies have threatened the livelihoods of retail and wholesale traders in the state. The business organization Confederation of West Bengal Trade Association (CWBTA) has strongly demanded immediate uniform pricing to prevent artificial price differences of products in online and offline markets and to ensure fair competition.
Since the beginning of the festive season, major e-commerce companies have been offering unbelievable discounts and cashback offers. CWBTA believes that these sales figures are not just rapidly growing business, but a dangerous sign for the country's traditional retail business. Due to abnormal price differences, most festive shopping is instantly shifting online, which is directly impacting the daily sales of local small market shops. Millions of small businessmen wait for this single season throughout the year.
The main reason for traders' frustration is competition. What corporate companies are doing cannot be called healthy. An offline trader has to pay heavy monthly shop rent, employee salaries, high commercial electricity bills, and taxes. Additionally, there are heavy operational costs on transportation and warehousing of products. To cover all those costs, they have to sell things at a limited profit. Meanwhile, when online platforms sell identical products through artificially created extra low-cost attractive advertising traps, the playing field is not level. Selling the exact same product of the same brand at completely different prices in two markets is unacceptable. In the name of modernity, the livelihood of lakhs of small traders cannot be snatched away and their existence cannot be erased. CWBTA demands that state and central governments and relevant policy makers should immediately investigate and review this competition between online and offline markets. Strict legal monitoring is needed to maintain reasonable parity in the prices of products of the same brand.
