Till now, you must have heard about increasing number of Indians joining social networking sites and increasing Internet penetration across the nation. But have you heard of Indians buying goods online? Not many? Think again!
Here are some of the statistics from the AC Nielsen Global Online Shopping Report 2010 –
- Currently more 23% Indians surveyed don’t buy any goods online
- 8 out of 10 Indians surveyed plan to shop online in the next twelve months and more than a quarter indicate that they spend towards 11% of their monthly expenditure on online purchases
- 71% Indians trust recommendations from their family, 64% from friends and 29% from product reviews while making an online purchase decision
- More than 50% of Indians utilize social media sites to help them make purchase decisions
- Books (41%), Airline tickets / reservations (40%) and electronic equipments (36%) dominate the online purchase basket
Be it – Book My Show, PVR Cinemas, Dominos Pizza, Nine West, Make My Trip etc. all of them are utilizing social media as a tool of sale rather than only engagement. Creation of apps to book tickets, apps to buy and sell used items, apps to take orders online – companies are going all out to woo the new age customer.
So how come such a huge change is been brought about?
As pointed out in the statistics, people trust their friends for recommendations for everything from buying clothes to going for a movie. Most of these discussions happen on social networking sites and companies are trying to drive their sales through these discussions
With increasing Internet and social media penetration in India, presence of companies online has become a must and with time they have moved from just engagement to generating sales through the online medium
The gradual transition of Facebook to a social media market place where goods can be marketed and sold has been a very big factor in the development of social shopping in India.
Many e–commerce apps like Payvment, My Merch Store etc. have been developed which can enable one to sell products directly from Facebook.
But there still are certain challenges to overcome before one can claim to have achieved great success –
- Relatively low Internet penetration
- Lack of confidence in giving details of credit card
- Indians still like to touch and feel the products before buying them
There are still miles and miles to go before companies can capture the e–commerce space in India. But the future looks promising.
What do you think of this? Should organizations of all kinds join social media? What should their strategy be?