HP intros Online Store, But Will it Help?

HP’s move is largely aimed to showcase the full product portfolio to consumers resulting in more footfalls and sales for channel Partners across India, but the questions is to what extent will this help now?

Hewlett-Packard India has introduced its new online store to complement its go-to-market ecosystem and help channel partners grow revenues. Since, channels have evolved over the time and India being unique territory with sub distribution model till date because of its diverse geographies, HP aims to provide many more touch-points for potential customers to access information on its vast range of PCs and printers before a purchase is made.

“We are committed to offering the best-in-class user experience to our customers and to grow together with our channel partners. This new online store addresses both goals and will help us discover new or underserved markets across India and thereby ensuring continued leadership in the PC and Printing categories in India. It will also showcase the full comprehensive product portfolio to all visitors and aid their decision making, resulting in more footfalls and sales for our channel partners,” says Rajkumar Rishi, Senior Director, Consumer GTM, PPS, HP India.

The online store is designed to target young buyers as a key market segment who research and gather information via online and social media sources for their purchases. Research commissioned by HP found that the population of Indian buyers at online stores is highly-skewed towards young males and half of these buyers are cross-shoppers – visiting both physical and online stores for their research.

HP offers the industry’s largest and most comprehensive portfolio of innovative and superior quality PCs and printers with over 80 and 100 SKUs in these categories respectively. HP’s complete range of desktop and notebook personal computers, workstations, handheld computers, inkjet and laser printing systems, software and accessories will now be available on www.hpshopping.in and all the orders will be processed by Savex Computers Ltd with maximum delivery time of seven days. The service and warranty criteria will remain same.

“HP aim is not to run a parallel sale model through this online store rather to enhance channel experience in terms of making less investment with higher margins for channels and making selling HP products feasible for them,” informs Rishi. Keeping this in view HP India will be very cautious about prices to be mentioned on site along with running specific schemes only at www.hpshopping.in.

“Consumer adoption of online research and purchase is rapidly growing particularly among the young generation and we feel this is the right moment for us to launch this initiative. The new online store is going to be a platform to draw in new retail customers to the HP brand and to help them make an informed purchase decision,” Rishi added.

The company has launched several new products for consumers in the recent past, including its first hybrid PC, HP Envy x2 in December 2012. In July 2013, HP has launched six new consumer PCs including notebooks, detachables, and All-in-One PCs.

Aiming to aid channel partners through their new initiative, the time will only tell that how beneficial it will prove to the partners in terms of revenue and profits.