'Price war' a letdown for online shoppers

(Ecns.cn)--As the price war continues between 360Buy, Suning and Gome, three of China's top online retailers for consumer electronics and computers, many have begun to speculate that the fight is nothing but a publicity stunt.

Liu Qiangdong, CEO of 360buy.com and initiator of the conflict, said Tuesday on his Sina Weibo (microblog) that home appliances at 360buy would cost at least 10 percent less than at the online platforms of Gome and Suning, its major competitors.

Liu boasted that 360buy has plenty of cash to fund the battle. He also said that as an e-commerce company, he could refresh prices every 30 minutes, something brick-and-mortar shops like Suning and Gome probably couldn't do.

"360buy will hire employees to monitor prices at Gome and Suning, and consumers will be compensated if our prices are not 10 percent lower than theirs," said Liu.

Yet according to statistics from eTao.com, a price comparison platform run by Alibaba, China's largest e-commerce company, prices didn't change very much.

On August 17, eTao.com found that overall, Gome's products were cheaper than 360buy's and Suning's, but the cheapest of all was Amazon.cn.

"Didn't you (360buy) say your products would be 10 percent cheaper than Suning's? So why is Suning's iPad 140 yuan cheaper than yours?" techinasia.com quoted a Weibo user.

By noon on August 15, only 78 of the 2,200 electronic appliances for sale at 360buy Jingdong Mall had been reduced in price, according to eTao.com. Moreover, about 30 percent of the supposedly lower-priced items were out of stock.

When people rushed online to buy discounted products that day, many of the items were either unavailable or not really cheaper. Jingdong even raised prices on about 50 items by up to 100 percent, said China Daily.

Reporters from the Southern Weekly also found that prices of home appliances at 360buy, Gome and Suning were very close.

On the morning of August 15, 360buy sold Haier BCD-186KB refrigerators for 1,389 yuan, while Suning sold them for 1,399 yuan. The prices dropped respectively to 1,358 yuan and 1,359 yuan by the afternoon, a difference of only 1 yuan. Price gaps between other products were similar.

"Is there a price war? I didn't see such a thing," Su Weimin, chairman of Suning, told Southern Weekly.

Zuo Yingjie, CEO of new7.com, a website that mainly sells electrical equipment, said the "war" looked more like marketing hype to attract customers.

"We have made a comparison. Some commodities on 360buy are even more expensive than those on our website," Zuo said.

"360buy.com's page visits have reached a historic record. Many consumers went to the website because of the 'price war,' which is in fact nothing but a low-cost advertisement," said a senior manager at Skyworth, an electronics manufacturer.