Building customer interest is the key to any business. Ecommerce is not far behind, ecommerce industry is gaining the trust of customers by offering great variety of goods, doorstep delivery, 24×7 availability and low prices. From last 2 years, apart for apparels, footwear, electronics, furniture, gaming and books, many industries like automobile industry, foodtech industry are also contributing much larger share in ecommerce than before. The Business-to-Consumer ecommerce (B2C) is the most common mold of ecommerce in India.
Role of internet in ecommerce
Every second, number of Indians are using internet for the first time and rapid increase in number of internet user is the main factor behind the growth of ecommerce in India. Rise in number of internet users changed the face of Indian economy. Internet opens the gate for many companies to directly make relation with customer, eliminating the middleman & helping the companies to lower the cost and to increase the revenue. Thus, providing the same services at much lower rate than before. Low prices of services encouraged more and more consumer to shift to services provided on internet. This trend is mostly seen in Tier-I and Tier-II cities. Tier-III cities are also contributing a large share but not that much due to no availability or slow speed internet, availability of more unorganized sectors, less awareness and problem of logistics. Development of Internet base forced many companies to use internet platform to reach to wide audience. Popular Ecommerce companies like Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal, Myntra and Jabong are shining in India.
Popularity of ecommerce
Research is done on 5 popular companies by Craft Driven Market Research on the basis on their keywords searched on Google in all 29 states of India. Number represents the search interest of keywords relative to the maximum number of search in past 12 months (May15-Apr16). Combined result of searches of keywords of 5 companies represent that in Tripura maximum number of searches on Google are done for ecommerce companies, followed by Meghalaya, Sikkim, Mizoram, Nagaland, Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. Most of the searches the done in the eastern part of India gives us no information about ecommerce business in East India. But we can definitely say that if these companies don’t have good hold in 10 states shown in the graph above, then there will a great opportunity for ecommerce companies to rise in these states.
Popularity based on traffic on website
Study done on the organic searches on Google i.e. traffic on the websites of 5 ecommerce companies from top 20 searches shows that 25.6M users open Snapdeal, 24.9M open Flipkart, 20.1M open Amazon followed by Jabong and Myntra with 8M and 2.8M respectively in India. Clearly, it can be depicted that Snapdeal is the most popular website (not mobile application) among these 5 companies. Popularity doesn’t implies the sales or total revenue. Popularity may be due to better interface, competitive pricing, availability of more products but trust factor and better service reflects the sales much better.
Payment Options
Number of ways are available for the transactions of payment in ecommerce industry but COD (cash on delivery) is the most popular one. COD is the biggest reason behind the growth of ecommerce industry in metropolitan cities and beyond the metropolitan cities. There is no doubt that ecommerce industry receives a rapid growth after introducing the COD as a payment option. Introduction of other options like mobile wallet are not capable to bring much change. Sense of money security, fear of misuse of card details barricade the customers to make online payments and opting more for COD. India being the third largest country on using credit cards but still COD for ecommerce is preferred by the Indian population.
Conclusion
In a decade time, ecommerce industry receives a huge growth in India. Advancement in technology and continuous improvement in logistics industry are making this industry as the biggest industry. Better infrastructure in online payments and little awareness will definitely change the trend and shift the trend of COD to online payments. Mobile commerce is increasing at rapid rate, use of mobile phones & use of credit and debit cards will surely move ecommerce industry at its height.
Tags: Craft Driven, Craft Driven Market Research, market research
