Every second online shopper in India is a new shopper; thanks to growing smartphone usage

As India’s number of smartphone users are likely to nearly double from 468 million in 2017 to 859 million by 2022, according to an Assocham-PwC study earlier this year, smartphones along with feature phones have remained the biggest category in e-commerce sales. According to a Nielsen report on e-commerce and online shoppers released on Thursday, mobiles contributes 48 per cent in terms of value contribution to the e-commerce sector followed by fashion with a share of 16 per cent and 11 per cent each for FMCG and large appliances categories. Interestingly, in terms of the number of orders in e-commerce, FMCG vertical dominates with a 56 per cent share. Fashion has 24 per cent while mobile or electronics accessories have a 10 per cent share. Being high-value products, mobiles and large appliances have 4 per cent and 2 per cent shares respectively. The figures, however, weren’t disclosed in the report.

Importantly, every second shopper online is a new shopper, said Nielsen, with 56 per cent first-time shoppers between August-October period this year vis-a-vis 44 per cent regular shoppers. 53 per cent of first-time shoppers bought mobile in their first purchase while only 16 per cent purchased fashion products in their maiden e-commerce buy. “Every second person on the channel is a new shopper, and it is imperative for brand managers and marketers to get actionable insights into online shoppers,” Prasun Basu, South Asia Zone President, Nielsen Global Connect said in a statement.

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Nielsen sourced the findings from its e-analytics solution between May and August 2019 period. E-commerce in India, which is now more than a decade old and dominated by large players including Amazon, Walmart-owned Flipkart, Snapdeal, etc., over the past few months has been facing allegations from offline businesses and traders claiming alleged irregularities in the e-commerce business model, regulatory violations, price control, deep discounting etc., impacting their businesses. The government had launched a draft national e-commerce policy in February this year and is likely to implement it in the current financial year to regulate the e-commerce market in India that is likely to grow to $188-billion in size by 2025 from $39 billion in 2017, according to Statista.

Among the other key finding was that e-commerce users in India shop maximum between 8 PM and 11 PM. While sales during 9 AM till 8 PM hovered around between 15 per cent and 16 per cent, during 8 PM and 11 PM, the sales zoomed up to 23 per cent. “This reinforces the consumer’s quest for convenience with any time, anywhere access to the shopping cart,” said Kunal Gupta, Head E-Commerce, Nielsen, South Asia.

Source: Financial Express