E-Commerce Growth in India
With the increase in 3G penetration and highly increasing Smartphone users, Indian e-commerce is rapidly increasing. India is having more than 900 million cell phone connections, placing itself second largest country after China. A report states that internet users in India are almost expected to increase the internet users by two forth, making it 330 million by 2016. Also other reports state that around 45% of online customers use only mobile to access internet. The appreciable rise in the internet users, acceptability of the online payments, increase in internet enabled devices plays a key factor in pushing the growth envelope.
In India's e-commerce industry, the they are changing. The factors that probably encourage the growth are busy lifestyles, traffic congestion, lack of offline shopping time, great deals and discounts offered online, and use of innovative e-commerce models such as group buying and second-hand sales and has led more and more customers to switch over to online marketing.
Online travel has been the largest E-Commerce country in India. To improve, online travel companies are adopting the other services even like hotel reservations, The online retail segment has grown rapidly in a few years. Cash on delivery option has lead to the great increase in it, with accounts to be 80 percent. Players have now offered an array of options from finding a second hand car to finding a babysitter.
Benefits of E-Commerce :
Product direct to end user : The product is direct to end user, no mediators. No traveling, no parking pains, saves fuel and parking money, no need to stand in queues for paying bills, healthier way to shop, can place orders while traveling using e-commerce. Better collections and ranges. There are gateways which facilitate users to compare prices and discounts available at different vendors.
To shop owner : No need to invest in real estate like Getting a building to exhibit the products, etc.. Also reduces pain of maintaining huge inventories, easier accountancy, can collect orders 24*7 days, prevents much man power, can provide better customer service and it allows them to receive payments faster.
Low Internet speed: Because in India still there is not much awareness of internet. Also the people at home prefer to get a lower speed internet plan as high speed is more expensive. Thus they avoid shopping online. This imposes a major restriction on E-Commerce in India.
Lack of people using Credit cards in India: I am pretty much sure that not every house in India would possess a credit card. It is acceptable that banks have restriction in distributing articles but they there should be efforts made to increase the credit card users.
The above statistics show that major of the E-Commerce is laid upon the online travel.
"Factors that impact the customer during the decision phase are many, and also vary from category to category. Availability and pricing usually play a significant role. Images of the product have a significant role for some categories. Lastly, the richness of the information about the product as well as product reviews has a noticeable role to play."
The report says that Out of all the categories bought by the online shoppers, the share of the online travel (47 per cent), apparels and footwear (20 percent), books (19 percent) and mobile phones and accessories (17 percent) was the most," it said, adding that debit cards, net banking and credit cards remained top most preferred modes of payments.