The Great Online Shopping Festival 2013

The Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) which was intiated last year was a one of a kind online event which served as a massive platform where numerous online retailers banded together to give amazing deals and discounts on their products. The concept is in line with Black Friday and Cyber Monday in US and Singles Day in China. The idea is a win-win situation for both retailers and customers – the former will be able to leverage their presence and reach out to their target audience while the former get to enjoy some great discounts. The Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) is aggresively promoted by Google hence the awareness and popularity quotient is very high which ensures a higher ROI, traffic and visibility for the retailers.

The Google Online Shopping Festival is back with a bang and has garnered almost thrice as much traffic compared to previous year.  More than 200 retailers and 15 travel companies is participating in the three day shopping festival starting from December 11 to 13. The travel companies participating in this years GOSF include Via, Cleartrip, Makemytrip, Cathay Pacific, Jet Airways and Hyatt hotels.

In the travel domain, customers get to choose from numerous deals including discounted hotel booking, flight booking and bus booking. During last years GOSF, online travel portals received incremental spike in traffic while it didn't translate in to bookings. The primary reason could be that travelers are fairly rigid in terms of their travel dates and would not have the flexibility of prolonging their booking to fall within the 3 day period. However, there could be a segment of travelers who are flexible with their travel plans, especially backpackers and solo travelers who can definitely benefit from the event. It would be interesting to see how online travel portals fare in this years GOSF.