A few months down the line, shoppers may get to make purchase decisions based on rating/grading given by a credit rating agency on online marketplaces.
Brickwork Ratings is developing a model whereby vendors selling on online marketplaces will be graded based on their service delivery capability, sales volume and satisfactory conclusion of transactions, among others.
The seven-year-old Bengaluru-based credit rating agency plans to introduce the facility of grading sellers on online marketplaces (such as Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal) in the next couple of months, said D Ravishankar, Founder Director.
“For example, an online marketplace such as Flipkart empanels its vendors and suppliers on its website. It is basically a platform that connects buyers and sellers. So, consumers require a rating (of sellers) that somebody can provide.
“We are doing some R&D. We are talking to a few e-commerce companies whether we can help their counterparties (sellers) to get rated,” said Ravishankar.
The grading is expected to help consumers be aware of the soundness of their purchase, and help sellers gain credibility.
Ravishankar observed that large online marketplaces may not have the capability to understand and assess the thousands of sellers empanelled to sell goods on their websites.
“We can do that for them in the form of a grading that will take into account service delivery capability, financial net worth, etc. We already have a presence at 70 locations. We will go and meet the sellers,” he said.
In a paper in international journal Applied Mathematics & Information Sciences , Yao Yao of the Institute of Service Engineering, Hangzhou Normal University (China), has observed that despite rapid development in trading volume, lack of regulation and potential default risk hinder the standardisation of the e-commerce industry worldwide.