Interestingly, 20% of the digital ad spend was attributed to eCommerce and online spend on eCommerce was estimated at INR 495 Crores as of March 2014.
Remarketing has been touted as one of the most sophisticated algorithms to have come across in digital marketing in a long, long time.
Instead of trying to bring the consumers to the products, it took the products to the consumers.
However, there is one little problem. The consumers did not find the idea sophisticated enough. In fact, consumers have a very different idea of the entire effort being put in for remarketing. Some think they are “being haunted”, some call it “being followed”, “an invasion to their privacy”, “desperation” on the part of the sellers or even “useless”.
DMTI undertook a study to understand this dichotomy among a projectable sample of consumers which was focused on addressing the habits and preferences of online shoppers.
Shoppers from across India were included in the study. An online survey was used to collect the data and interviews were conducted to probe deeper into the perceptions and trends in online and offline shopping among the TG. The respondents were mainly students or employed in the private sector and from across the four metro cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai.
In one recent study IAMAI-IMRB suggested that India’s E-commerce market will reach $56 billion by 2023, driven by rising online retail.
However, compared to such staggering figures, India’s e-commerce industry is still in a nascent stage. Online shopping accounts for less than one percent of the total shopping in the country. And the biggest drivers of online purchase, as it seems, are the deals and discounts. As per analysis, 55% and 61% of the respondents look for online discounts and deals respectively. Second on the list is the convenience that online shopping has to offer. Consumers are more confident buying brands they have bought and used before and brands can leverage on this familiarity to do away with the “touch and feel” constraint, especially for products priced on the higher side.
Also, when people adopted online shopping for the purchase of electronic goods, it was because of the deals, discounts and bargains. The respondents expressed that if the price is no lesser online, they would prefer to go buy it in a store.
And then there are categories that have still not picked up with the quintessential Indian consumers, categories like groceries, jewellery, furniture and International food Items.
Online jewellery retail too is poised to be one of the fastest growing segments in India’s e-commerce market which is projected to become an $8 billion industry in the next two years. However, the consumers still do not seem too interested in buying these things online, be it vegetables or diamonds.
The current share of online sales in the $50 billion domestic jewellery market is a minuscule 0.5% and the consumers seem not only uninterested but averse to the idea of online purchase of gold and diamonds.
Almost 42% and 44% of the respondents remember being “followed” by ads based on their last search and last purchase respectively.
Know in details about this interesting analysis.