Internet shopping boom in India

Well, Rakhi season is here and as expected all my inboxes are flooded with promo mailers from different e-commerce sites about online Rakhi hampers and packs. After going through different mailers and hampers on offer, I settled for one of the Rakhi packs from rediff.com shopping portal. I have been sending Rakhi through online shopping for last 5 years I think. Though it is bit expensive than the normal post / courier service but I still prefer it over those primarily because of delivery guarantee and presentation / packaging. I have faced some irritating issues earlier when Rakhi was not delivered on time even after couriering it well in advance and once I remember I had sent the Rakhi and a small gift in a very beautiful packet only to come to know later that my brother had only received Rakhi in an open envelope without any gift inside :-). So, considering the assurance and convenience which I get while sending it through these e-commerce sites I find it to be justified to spend those extra bucks for it.

But I must say unlike few years back, this year it took me some time to make my purchase decision mainly because every online shopping was having some or other interesting thing to offer with almost nil price differentiation. Another interesting thing to be noticed was the way packets were described in these portals, instead of simply saying packet consists of 1 Rakhi, 1 card, etc. most of them were focusing on the packaging and the relevance of it to the tradition of Rakhi. Ehhh quite attractive and strong marketing so to say. E-commerce sites are learning it well to push online shopping esp. during festivals in India. Despite the price curve moving steeply upwards during peak season these sites are very much able to sell their products as there is a certain set of TG in Indian market now who is becoming used to the convenience of online shopping.

Infact last week only I had read an interesting article in ET about internet shopping catching up fastly in India. As per the statistics, eBay India is selling one product a minute and its not only software or tech product which is being sold, rather its surprising to know that one of the most common products sold online is jewelery. Here are some other interesting figures from that ET article (dated 3^rd Aug’08) about eBay India which reinforces the surge of internet shopping in India.

• On an average day a piece of jewellery is sold every seven minutes, a coin or note sells every 16 minutes, a stamp sells every 19 minutes, an apparel sells every 22 minutes and a book is sold every 27 minutes on eBay India

• 70-75% of buyers on eBay India are from age group of 25-30 years.

• It is jewellery that is the most sought product on this site.

• Buying trend wise electronic gadgets are popular among male buyers and jewellery is the obvious choice of Indian women.

• Apart from jewellery, apparel category is the other area which is a favorite among women buyers.

Apparel and jewellery being bought online in India, online shopping is really catching up then :-)