Croma Retail Launches Online Store; Our Take

By Vikas SN on Apr 24th, 2012 |

Infiniti Retail Ltd, the wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons, which runs the multi-brand electronics store chain Croma, has launched an online version of its property at cromaretail.com. Quite similar to its physical stores, Croma’s online store claims to offer more than 6,000 products and 180 brands in eight categories including phones, cameras, computers, entertainment devices, home and kitchen appliances, gaming devices, and electronic accessories. The store is powered by Interface Business Solutions, which has previously built sites for various Tata brands like Tata Docomo, Tata Tele services, Tata Walky, Tata Photon, as well as other brands like Samsung, Maruti, Bajaj and Globus.

Our Take

Features

The site is divided into various sections like ‘What’s new’ which features its latest offerings, ‘Hard to Find’ which showcases nifty gadgets and ‘Recently sold’ which as the name suggests, features the latest additions on the e-commerce portal.

The navigation bar has a popup menu, which allows users to hover over any product category like phones, cameras and computers to browse through any sub-category like mobile phones, television, digital cameras, and DVD players or browse through any specific brand of their preference like Apple, Sony, Samsung, LG, Nokia and many more. Interestingly, Croma seems to have integrated its self-branded electronic merchandise along with other merchandise, rather than providing a dedicated section for its self-branded products, although it is listed as one among the brands in the popup menu. Apart from these, there is a keyword-based search box which allows users to search for their favorite product.

After choosing their preferred sub-category, users can refine the results based on various features, brands, price range and other product specific attributes. Users can also sort the results by relevance, latest items, or in the alphabetical order. There is also a comparison engine which allows users to compare the products on various criteria.

Besides this, Croma also offers buying guides and tips across various products categories, allowing users to browse through general information about any specific product category like the basic features one could expect, top brands or products in that category, key differences between them and so on.

There is also a dedicated ‘Croma Zone‘ which at the time of writing this article, directed users to download an installer for Croma Apps, a co-branded app store by the retailer and Intel App Up. We wonder why Croma hasn’t featured its self-branded products here which would’ve helped in better discovery, rather than mixing it with other products.

As an interesting aside, Croma Retail seems to be the only third party e-commerce portal offering Intel and Lava’s new smartphone XOLO 900, and with the company being an authorized reseller for Apple products, one could expect this online store to become an unofficial online channel for the upcoming new iPad and other Apple products in India.

Delivery and Shipping

As of now, the payment modes include credit cards, debit cards and net banking. There is also a 3, 6, 9 and 12 month EMI option for HDFC and ICICI bank credit cards on orders of Rs 2,000 or higher. Shipping is currently free and Croma claims to deliver goods to all deliverable locations in India within 7 days. However, it did ask our pincode to verify if the company delivers in that specific area and noted that the price might vary depending on the user’s location.

Category : eCommerce, Internet, Tata Group | Tags : Croma, Croma Zone, Infiniti Retail Ltd, Interface Business Solutions, Tata Sons

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http://www.worldofphones.net adityasinghvi

Varying prices??? If it’s supposed to be online.. then the prices shouldn’t vary, first faux pas in online retailing being committed. Also 7 days is something that we had heard of when eBay had come to India… but to see it again… :O
http://thunderror.com thunderror

They need a mobile optimized layout as well.
http://taur.in/ Lawrence

Its slow as hell!
http://www.beingpractical.com Pravin J

Missed the most awesome feature – check availability at the nearest Croma Store!
http://gottabreakfree.com Gaurav Agrawal

Good summary, but leaves me wanting more. I would have preferred to read some more insights around the quality of the features, which can be categorized into standard, nice-to-have, and the missing ones. Comparison with leading sites in electronics retail (from India and abroad) would have added some good comparative flavor as well.
http://twitter.com/NowEntrepreneur Kulin Shah

Will be interesting to compare prices of the online and physical stores (there should be an advantage to buy it online). Couple of things they missed / could add on:

1) They are not offering their extended warranty online.
2) In case I need it earlier I should be able to pick my order from a designated Croma Store (good to have but will a feature like this can create a supply chain havoc :D)
3) In case they don’t have a particular SKU – Give me a no of the nearest Croma Store.
Mahendra Birhade

The prices for products in physical store & online are same, recently I have purchased Samsung Galaxy Tab PS6200 from physical store, i checked same into the online channel, price was exactly same i.e 26999, also in store there were free offering of Tab case & Bluetooth, where as i didn’t find that on the web channel….

I think there has to be some strategy either to differentiate online or physical store, or if no differentiation than offering should be same
http://www.necdisplay.com NEC Display

Yes, That good for consumer..
RP

come on medianama, one expects more depth and critique in your reviews. And remember an ecommerce or online retail offering is more than just the website. One also needed to review related service processes such as customer care, fulfilment, order intimation, payment processes – for which some mystery shopping would be useful.

As regards the “site” or the “shop”, here are some additional areas of review (not exhaustive – you’ll have to pay me for that :) ) . These points are essentially shopper careabouts:

a. The product : Retail is after all all about the product ie products being sold. So it is important to cover the quality of merchandise assortment, categories, pricing and some comparative points vis a vis the croma store and other sites such as letsbuy/flipkart, ezoneonline, etc.

b. Additional site specific features: Load speed (broadband and dial-up) – site loaded reasonably fast relative to letsbuy or flipkart, browser compatibility, quality of search (croma looks good on search) , quality of product information (eg quality of photos on croma site is terrible), site navigation, easy of buying, payment options, etc. As mentioned this is just indicative.

happy reviewing!
http://www.facebook.com/surendra.r.birje Surendra R Birje

So this is one more way for Croma to cheat its customers. The customer service does not respond even when goods are purchased from physical stores. When you purchase from the e store, your money is gone. Worst customer service representatives seen in any company. They just believe in bluffing and passing time till the warranty period is over.

Croma Retail Launches Online Store; Our Take

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