Abstract
The rapid growth of digital commerce has transformed the methods through which businesses acquire and retain customers. Digital platforms like Swiggy, Zomato and Blinkit work with online advertising, applications, artificial intelligence, and customer relationship strategies and target customers through digital cartography. Using the customer acquisition data from January to May 2026, this paper compares the relative brand equity of these three leading digital platforms in Visakhapatnam which is classified as Tier-II city. The data is based on six customer acquisition parameters i.e., Advertisement Impressions, Advertisement Clicks, App Registrations; First Orders, Repeat Customers and Loyal Customers and five essential acquisition metrics Viz., Click Through Rate, Lead Conversion Rate, Customer Conversion rate, Repeat Customer Rate and Loyalty Rate. The Average Rank Method has been used for evaluating the performance of individual companies. Results showed Swiggy ranked highest with an average rank of 1.80 due to its better reach and retention capabilities in advertisements. With no extremes in performance across all metrics, Zomato scored second; Blinkit, while converting easy customers to real ones with remarkable efficiency, performed poorly when it came to retaining them. The research finds that a sustainable competitive edge in the digital age relies not just on bringing customers to the brand but also on nurturing long-term customer loyalty with customized services and better-quality customer experience.
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