Strategy Behind Amazon India’s Treasure Hunt

As we can see from the above picture, Amazon India had a contest called APP Treasure Hunt. This was followed immediately after they had “The Great Indian Festival Sale” which was held between 10^th and 16^th October as we can see the below picture.

Soon after they had this big one-week sale, they intended to wind up. But what did their competitors do? They came up relentlessly with many such sales for example Snapdeal had Monday blockbuster sale on every Mondays and Flipkart almost every week has different kinds of sale offers leading up to Diwali festival.

Amazon didn’t want to miss out of any opportunity and they wanted to be the top E-commerce player in the country. Hence they came up with the “APP TREASURE HUNT”. It was started immediately after the Diwali Dhamaka Week got over. For every hour, a clue was given and we had to find what type of product it is and by visiting the product page, we could get it for just 1Re which is equivalent to 0.015 US Dollar.

The deal was absolutely crazy. Everyone started visiting the app every hour and every day hoping to get hold of things at dream prize which is like almost like a free giveaway. Just like everybody else. I also decided to jump into it and see what I could grab.

I happen to solve a puzzle and the product was Rubix’s cube. I was searching for the product page like a mad fellow, as getting at unrealistic price is often an enticing one. Finally found the product where the lightening deal with 1 Re was mentioned. But it was disabled stating that it has been booked and even wait list got filled. 

• I was shocked because I solved it under a minute.
• This is really a bait strategy adopted by Amazon.
• First they lure us and make us check every hour.
• Indulge us to participate and spend time with them.
• Later at the end of every hour, they post attractive products discovered and tempt us to seriously try with them and make us visit them again and again.
• They were creating a habit to visit their app more than any of their competitors.

Many would have seen the lightening deals. It's not that great discounts offered and not always on most popular products. It's mostly for the products which was not sold for longer periods and the ones require awareness and publicity.

Then I was watching it and was wondering how long and why are they adopting such a bait strategy. Then came this another Diwali Sale.

On 26^th I visited their app at 00:00 hours. To my surprise, the Treasure hunt is nowhere to be seen. As I suspected, it was a bogus and cheap bait tactics adopted by the so called World’s best E-commerce company. After their sale on 28^th, I again visited on 29^th and again it was not there at all.

From this what can we understand guys?

The reason for their daily deals is to make us visit them again and again and make us habituated with them. They're training us to be their customers and not of their competitors through these strategies.

I hope people don't fall for such tricks and buy products only if it's absolutely required for them.