Online shopping in India has hit a tipping point and is expected to see exponential growth in 2013, says Google India. The search giant combined consumer interest observed on Google search and online research conducted by TNS to come out on a new report on online shopping in India. The report says online shopping in India saw 128% growth in interest from the consumers in the year 2011 to 2012, compared to only 40% in 2010 to 2011.
The report also highlighted some barriers that deter people from shopping online - the number one factor was inability to touch and try the goods before purchase, fear of faulty products, fear of posting their personal and financial details online and the inability to bargain were cited among the other reasons.
In terms of product categories, consumer interest on Google search for apparels & accessories (30%) emerged as the second biggest product category after consumer electronics (34%). The former is expected to become bigger than consumer electronics in 2013 in terms of absolute query volumes. Other categories that Indians searched for online were books (15%), beauty & personal care (10%), home & furnishing (6%), baby products (2%) and healthcare (3%). Baby products, home & furnishing and healthcare saw over twofold growth and were also the fastest growing product category in terms of query volume on Google search.
Mobile devices are also becoming a contributor in the surge for online shopping, with Google witnessing twofold growth in number of queries from mobile phones in 2012 over the preceding year. Currently, 30% of all shopping queries in India come from mobile phones.
Google India's report says 90% of online shoppers are planning to buy more products online. In terms of top product categories ever purchased online, apparels & accessories was among the top category (84%), followed by electronics (71%), beauty & personal care (64%), books (62%) and household products (61%). The research also highlighted that baby products (39%), health & nutrition (43%) product category were also becoming popular with online buyers. The frequency of purchase was also higher for categories like apparels & accessories (34%), beauty & personal care (33%) products in comparison to electronics (28%).
In terms of converting more users to shop online, online ticketing emerged as the gateway, as it was easier to convert online ticket buyers to shop online. Online ticket consumers were also likely to spend higher average, as people spent Rs 2347 on their first product purchase in comparison to Rs 1626 for others. 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%).
Rajan Anandan, vice president and managing director of Google India, said "By looking at the trends in 2012, we expect 2013 to be a strong growth year for players who're focussed on fast growing categories like apparels & accessories and niche product categories like baby products, home furnishings & health-nutrition. We expect the growth to come from outside of top 8 metros as was evident in our recently concluded Great Online Shopping Festival, which saw over 51% of traffic from non-metros."
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