eCommerce trends in India

E-Commerce has taken the Indian market by storm and has changed the landscape of retailing in this country. A few years ago, I remember observing conversations in media as well as at various industry events revolving around the fear of the negative impact that e-commerce could have on offline retail. Fortunately, today I see offline retailers keenly exploring the possibility of rather participating in e-commerce by setting up their online stores.  Here are a few of my observations:

While offline retailers are keenly participating in the online retail business, I am noticing a few e-commerce companies setting up offline retail stores as well. This trend of co-existence as well as cross-channel flow appears to be healthy for retail growth. While companies such as “Shoppers Stop” have been focusing on their online store, e-commerce companies such as Pepperfry are considering opening offline stores.

The advancement in the area of customer management systems and analysis of data is helping companies understand their customers and their online behaviour better. This is helping the companies have a better-targeted approach to their marketing and engagement efforts. Today, e-commerce companies are able to promote specific product lines to their customers based on their engagement patterns. This is set to grow further as the focus on big data intensifies.

E-commerce companies are focusing on addressing the concern regarding the customer experience and trying to replicate the same online. I guess this is the reason e-commerce companies have been trying to better the presentation of  product information online and equipping back end teams better to answer the queries of their customers.

Most Indian users have been using their mobile to access Internet. This is impacting the customer engagement patterns and the communication to them. Today e-commerce companies are focusing on their mobile sites and / or applications. Mobile payment companies have added fuel to the growth of M-Commerce as well. 

With e-commerce platforms easily available, it is becoming increasingly easier to set up an e-commerce website. In fact with products like Shopify, companies can start selling their products on Facebook. Integrated with social websites, a large part of customer acquisition is also becoming relatively easy and seamless.

Most large international e-commerce players are growing with country specific sites for global market. This is specifically true for big consumer markets like China and India. We can expect to see global players in specific product specific domains also enter the Indian market soon.

With Indians being entrepreneurial in nature, such developments will only make it easier for Indian retail sector to continue growing exponentially and attract small retailers in engaging online.