Great Online Shopping Festival

The Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) was a flagship annual online shopping event created by Google India on 12 December 2012 in collaboration with a number of Indian online shopping portals. The concept of the GOSF was that the online shopping sites would give heavy discounts for one day, in order to promote their sales. In November 2015, Google announced the shut down of this event stating that "Users don't have to wait for 12 months to get the best deals online, small and medium businesses no longer have to wait for www.gosf.in to find customers from all across India," [1]


History

The concept of a one-day online sale originated in the United States, where many online shopping sites offer discounts on "Cyber Monday", the first Monday after the so-called Black Friday, the day that follows the U.S. Thanksgiving. Cyber Monday started in 2005 and the concept has spread to several countries including Canada, Japan, Australia, Colombia, and the U.K.. In China a similar day of online shopping is observed on November 11, which is known as "Singles Day".

The first Great Online Shopping Festival in 2012 was advertised on YouTube and via posts on Google Plus. For the event, Google partnered with a number of ecommerce sites such as Flipkart, HomeShop18, Snapdeal, Indiatimes shopping, Infibeam and Makemytrip, which would participate in the GOSF.[2] The ecommerce sites created dedicated landing pages for GOSF. GOSF site engaged users through games and showing offers and eventually it redirected users to the dedicated landing pages of ecommerce sites to do the transactions.

According to critics, the first GOSF left some consumers a little disappointed as the discounts were marginal or nonexistent.[3]

In 2013, the Great Online Shopping Festival was held on 11–14 December. Participating companies included Myntra, Jabong.com, and Indiatimes Shopping. Google claimed that the shopping festival was a success for the companies, and extended the event, which was planned to end on 13 December, by one day.[4]

The Great Online Shopping Festival 2014

In December 2014, the GOSF took place on Dec 10 - 12, and involved over 450 online retailers.

2014 GOSF included several categories such as lifestyle, electronics, books and media, home and kitchen, groceries, mobile apps, automobiles, and real estate.[5] Discounts were also given on career services, health care and insurance policies, travel packages and matrimonial plans.

Apart from discounts, several brands also launched their products at the GOSF. Some of the launched products included Motorola Nexus 6, Google Chromecast, and Appyappstore (an app store for children).

See also

References

  1. ↑ http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/google-logs-out-of-its-flagship-online-shopping-festival-gosf/articleshow/49643856.cms
  2. ↑ "Google partners e-commerce sites for 'Cyber Monday' on December 12". Economic Times. 4 December 2012. Retrieved 9 December 2012.
  3. ↑ "http://www.thinkdigit.com/Internet/Great-Online-Shopping-Festival-success-or-sham_11733.html"
  4. ↑ "E-commerce sites ride high on Google online shopping fest". Times of India. 17 December 2013. Archived from the original on 2014-01-10. Retrieved 10 Jan 2014.
  5. ↑ "Google Online Shopping Festival". A Google initiative. Google. 10 Dec 2014. Retrieved 11 Dec 2014.

External links

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