In a move to empower buyers, PriceMap, an e-commerce player now enables its users to tell a shop keeper what he/she wants to buy, and the retailer responds with "have or don't have" response, depending on availability.
Typical online shopping requires a buyer to surf through a catalogue which is built by sellers digitizing and uploading their shop inventory on a daily basis.
However, PriceMap buyer surfs online on various retail or brand sites to decide what they want to buy. After having selected the product, they send a query to retailers in city markets of their choice. The retailers gets this query in real time with all the product details and reverts back with "have or don't have" response, along with additional information on best available deals.
By doing this reversal of roles, where a buyer tells retailer what he wants and retailer reverts back, PriceMap aims to create a unique ecosystem that enables millions of stores to attract online shoppers without having to digitise the store inventory.
Further, the app enables a shopper to find a particular product and best deal available in the local market without having to spend hours in traffic and parking to hop shop by shop. Therefore, it solves the biggest challenge of physical retail - product and price discovery in local markets.
