The e-tailers that are technology driven from the virtual world are running to the real world retailers for money as they attract the smart buyers with doorstep deliver, heavy discounts, and low prices. It all began three years back, and now it has turned into a great tide that is evident from the extraordinary growth of the e-tail business. This applies mainly to the categories such as electronic goods, consumer goods, appliances, durables, food, travel and fashion.
The major factors are the faster access to the internet with the broadband and Wi-Fi facilities, and the increase in the use of smartphones and other such handheld smart devices including tablets. These have enabled browsing the e-commerce websites and booking products a growing trend across the country. This trend has not only spread in the cities, but also in the tier 2 and tier 3 towns.
As per a survey conducted by Flipkart, FlipTrends2015, the national capital is the most only shopping savvy region in the country. It is followed by cities such as Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai as well as Hyderabad.
When it comes to the tier 1 cities, Pune is leading and it is followed by Coimbatore, Ahmedabad, and Lucknow. The only city in the eastern part of the country to be online shopping savvy is Bhubaneswar.
In Karnataka, Mangaluru is the top tier 2 city and it is followed by Mysuru, Dehradun, Salem, and Guntur.
Changes in the lifestyle and the changing shopping choices of buyers make the online channels as highly preferred ones than the physical channels. Moreover, the former has a wide variety of products and it is also time consuming to shop online.
The smart buyers are attracted towards online shopping as numerous products and goods are available across different categories at the best price. The e-tail business has attracted investors, and as a result, new business segments including food delivery, hyper local, classifieds, grocery, healthcare and real estate have come online.
Even e-tailers such as Amazon, Snapdeal and Flipkart are focusing on improving their frequency and customer retention by providing personalized products and creating offline touch points.
