Online shopping in India saw a 128 % growth in interest from consumers in 2012 as compared to the previous year, according to a new report. The growth was only 40 % between 2010 and 2011, said the report compiled by Google and TNS Australia.
The report used data from Google Trends and a sample survey of 800 users in November 2012.
Consumers were most interested in apparels & accessories (30%) and consumer electronics (34%). Other categories that Indians searched for online were Books (15%), Beauty & Personal care (10%), Home & furnishing (6%), Baby products (2%) and healthcare (3%).
Google has been pushing online shopping in India. Recently, the company held the Great Online Shopping Festival. Through the festival held on 12.12.12 the company brought in most e-commerce players in the country and got them to showcase some great deals on a single platform. Partner sites said they were happy with the traffic surge they saw on the day. For Google, this is not merely an altruistic exercise but also a way of showing potential advertisers the power of Google.
Niche categories such as baby products, Home & furnishing, & health care saw over 2x growth in interest and were also the fastest growing product category in terms of query volume on Google search.
Rajan Anandan, VP & Managing Director of Google India, said:
With approximately 8 million Indians shopping online in 2012, online shopping industry in India is growing rapidly and will continue to see exponential growth.
According to Google, mobile phones is also becoming a contributor in the surge for online shopping with Google witnessing 2x growth in number of queries from mobile phones in the year 2011 to 2012. Currently, 30% of all shopping queries in India come from mobile phones. These trends were also validated with the help of a online research conducted by TNS Australia of the internet users in the age group 18 to 50 from Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad & Pune.
As per the research, 90% of online shoppers are planning to buy more products online which reflects on the positive experience of the users.
The frequency of purchase was also higher for categories like apparels & accessories (34%), beauty & personal care (33%) products in comparison to electronics (28%). Which also makes these categories more profitable because of repeat purchase.
Online ticket buyers were also seen to be more comfortable with the use of debit cards (24%), credit card (19%) and cash on delivery (55%).
For regular internet users – cash on delivery was the most preferred mode of payment (74%), followed by debit card (18%) & credit card (5%).
