Prastut white papers

India is at the cusp of a giant e-commerce revolution. Consumers are taking to online shopping as if there is no tomorrow.

They are enabled with technology that allows them to approach the shopping process in a different way than they have in the past. In a price sensitive, bargain led market like India where the ’bazaar’ like environment in the markets fuels more buying the success of a relatively inert market place on a mobile or laptop screen is surprising! Of course, most of the buying online is currently driven by deals and discounts available, easy return policies, convenient logistics and ease of buying.

The number of mobile Internet users in India is projected to double and cross the 300 million mark by 2017 from 159 million users at present (IAMAI).

As ecommerce brands evolve from ‘commodity markets’ to sought after brand names, and shoppers become more savvy and discerning, is it time for new purchase influencers to come into play?

The time has come where in on line retailers should be able to answer the all important question of traditional marketing “Why People Are Doing What They Are Doing?” clearly. They should be able to smartly leverage social media to drive word of mouth.

Lest the consumers go back to the ’bazaar’ mode, they should make efforts to design a seamless and connected customer journey as shoppers migrate across channels.

shopping for it and post-purchase has the following important processes

Are on line shoppers using some tangible yardsticks even now to make choices? Prastut commissioned a pilot survey among young online shoppers to understand more about the buying behavior of this new digital shopper. Presently the information available about most products is the brand, price, deal and discount offered and a user rating/review. Given that price, brand and discounts are definitely purchase drivers, the present research set out to ascertain whether product ratings influence the buying decision, how much do the buyers rely on these ratings and for what kind of products. A structured questionnaire was prepared to understand the buyer opinions and views regarding using on-line ratings for product purchase.The survey was conducted on line. Target respondents considered were those who buy on line products, age group primarily 18-35 years, Male/Female. Responses from a sample of 500 avid on-line shoppers were collected in Feb 2016.

Top line findings from the survey are:

  • Clothing and accessories and consumer electronics are the top two product categories being bought online. More than 2/3rds online shoppers purchase these categories.

  • Online buyers are most influenced by the ratings and reviews of the product before buying. Peers and friends opinion about the product are almost equally considered. Purchases are less influenced by cheap price or product trials.

  • Very high 91% online buyers research about the product before buying. Large majority of online Shoppers generally do not spend more than a few hours researching about a product. Time spent on researching is related with product category.

  • Very high 50% online buyers look out for buyer ratings of the product at the time of researching for the product. Online buyers trust the ratings and reviews available on the sources they consult.

  • 53% online buyers trust the ratings and reviews available as much as they trust personal recommendations. Good ratings enjoyed more confidence amongst buyers than bad ratings.

The survey also enumerates buyer satisfaction with the seller website on product buying experience, delivery experience and product usage experience for last product purchased online. Analysis is sliced by metro v/s non metro, seller website wise and gender.

Ask for full “Digital Shopper Behaviour” study by joining the free subscription to the Prastut Survey of The Month.