- Will Diwali Ecommerce Boom Hurt Brick And Mortar Retailers Free
- Will Diwali Ecommerce Boom Hurt Brick And Mortar Retailers List
- Will Diwali Ecommerce Boom Hurt Brick And Mortar Retailers Like
Malls, retailstores are being hit by online sales and are struggling this festive season.
Brick and mortar retailers and wholesalers are getting worse hit by the e-commerce industries and so they are pressurizing various bands to support them for competing with ecommerce websites. Due to increasing growth of e-commerce industries, retail industry is lacking behind because the density of sales get reduced. According to an analysis by ACI Worldwide Research, global e-commerce retail sales skyrocketed 209% in April driven by strong demand for home office equipment, gaming and digital entertainment.
Just days after the October 6 ‘Big Billion Day’ sale hosted by e-commerce company Flipkart , followed by American biggie Amazon’s week-long dhamaka up to this Thursday, the online buzz is getting louder even across physical stores and malls ahead of Diwali, the peak spending season in India.
Business Standard reporters checked prominent shopping destinations in Delhi and the National Capital Region, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Chennai to assess shoppers’ mood and how physical retail was responding to the deep discounts offered by their online rivals.
There are still some days for Diwali and e-commerce is only two to three per cent of the country's total retail scene. However, the online disruption is out in the open, as this multi-city check showed.
Brick and mortar outlets on high streets and inside malls are trying to hold on to the business that has been theirs alone for years, through lower prices and deals. But, most admit, offline discounts can hardly ever match what’s on offer online, against which the trade is already up in arms.
Physical retailers are blaming online players for getting “more enquiry and less sales” at their stores. A ‘special offer inside’ sign prominently displayed at a show and apparel showroom in an East Delhi mall didn’t help much last weekend, for instance.
“Sales have dipped by 20-30 per cent and footfalls by five to seven per cent compared to the same period last year,” says the store manager, Suman Kumar. A flat 25 per cent off was on offer.
At an electronics store in the heart of the city, Connaught Place, usually over-crowded, sales were down. “Earlier, the footfall to conversion ratio was 25-30 per cent. It has dropped to 15-18 per cent. As things stand, we are staring at a dip in sales in the region of 10 per cent during the festive season,” said an executive.
On the outskirts of Mumbai, a large mall in Thane looked rather dull last Sunday, given that it is normally chock-a-block with shoppers during the pre-Diwali weekends.
“The number of shoppers is indeed less. But our loyal customers are still shopping from the store, as many like our after-sales service, and guidance,” said an executive at an electronics chain. The reason is clear. The store sells a particular brand of a Nokia phone at Rs 15,000, double the price on Amazon during the Diwali offer.
At another prominent mall in Mumbai, store managers are optimistic. “We will get back our customers. We always give better deals,” he says.
Harkirat Singh, managing director of footwear brand Woodland, says they're seeing a 10-12 per per cent growth in sales in the run-up to Diwali, as against an expectation of 25 per cent.
“E-commerce firms are giving huge discounts and shoppers come to stores asking for such discounts. We cannot give these due to our cost structures,” he said. Woodland has, however, started offering separate lines for e-commerce portals and offline stores, to attract shoppers on both platforms.
“We have to live with online discounts. We have to see how we can minimise the impact with different lines,” Singh added.
Perhaps responding to the series of online sales, stores in Bangalore unleashed Diwali discounts and deals ahead of time.
Shopping centres such as at Jayanagar, JP Nagar, Indira Nagar, MG Road, Brigade Road, Commercial Street and Majestic offered discounts of 10-50 per cent on readymade garments, footwear, consumer durables, electronics and household articles. Mantri Mall, Orion Mall, Garuda Mall, Forum Mall, Gopalan Mall and Bangalore Central, among other leading ones, were decked for Diwali, with food festivals and shopping carnivals.
If you haven't already, download Gibbed's Mass Effect 2 Save Editor. Start a new Mass Effect 2 game preferably with a female shepard (although putting female hairstyles on a male shepard will surely have interesting results). A Lot of Textures (ALOT) Mass Effect 2 is a pretty darn good game that just hasn’t. Ottemis's Gibbed Femshep Hair, Hats and Textures Original Forum Post This is meant to get all the gibbed facial textures and hairstyles for femshep in one place, instead of scattered all over the web. Mass effect 2 hair mods. Your hair mods are awesome. I’m putting together an improved character creator mod for Mass Effect 3 (better hair colour, skin tone, eye colour options, etc.) and extra hairstyles – selectable during character creation. At the moment I’m using other NPC styles, but would love to be able to use some of these, if that was okay with you?
A leading consumer durables and electronics retail outlet in Bangalore has launched its annual Diwali Mega Festival Sale with gifts and prizes worth Rs 11 crore.
Will Diwali Ecommerce Boom Hurt Brick And Mortar Retailers Free
Download free m4a to mp3 converter apkunbound. It is distributing 25 cars free for lucky-dip winners. In all, the shop is offering 55,555 prizes over one and a half months. A store manager said, “Customers would like to touch and feel the products, which is possible only in physical shops and we offer that experience.”
Besides, there are other schemes—for example, popular apparel brands are offering freebies on purchase of goods worth Rs 4,000, Rs 7,999, etc.
A mobile phone retailer was offering 100 per cent cash back on purchase of select smartphones, while some others gave away gold coins, watches and trolley bags on shopping of select goods.
In Kolkata, retailers are feeling the online heat, particularly in the electronic goods segment. Sales of electronic goods during the festive season has been down 35-40 per cent in the city, according to Sushil Poddar, vice-president, Confederation of West Bengal Trade Association.
“People come to retail shops only to see the product and note specifications. We are taking up the issue with the government, as e-commerce sites are adversely affecting the sales,” he said.
Across other categories as well, discounts and promotional offers seem to have emerged as a key to compete with online sales. According to a spokesperson of Big Bazaar in Kolkata, the company’s festive season sales began as early as the end of August.
“Till date, during the festive season, sales in the fashion segment saw an 11 per cent increase over last year’s festive sales. In the food segment, the sales grew 15 per cent, while overall growth in the eastern region was 12 per cent this festive season over last year.’’
Offline retailers have been hurt but it is difficult to put a number to the business loss due to online discounts. Yet, Kishore Biyani, chief executive of Future Group, has said: “E-commerce has captured the mind share of customers, (though) not the market share…Who will not buy a product if you offer a 50 per cent discount?”
Adding: “You cannot undercut prices and kill local trade.” Even so, his Future Group has announced a tie-up to sell its private labels on Amazon.
In Chennai, the Diwali enthusiasm has been dampened more by the political uncertainty (the state chief minister was convicted recently of making illegal money), rather than the rise of e-commerce, analysts said. At T Nagar, shopping hub of Chennai, the sentiment is low. The hope is that the mood will pick up closer to Diwali, when enquiries and footfalls are likely to convert into purchases.
The e-commerce sites have had no major impact on apparel retailers in Chennai so far, said G Venugopal, heading the Naidu Hall Family Store, a known apparel brand in the city.
However, electronics is one segment that seems to have been hit all across the country due to the online discounts. To beat this impact, a consumer electronics chain in the city has came out with a Diwali offer for a week, with a scheme in which one could pay Rs 1 and take favourite products home.
Speaking of sales across the country, Alok Dubey, chief executive officer (CEO), Arvind Lifestyle Brands, which retails brands such as US Polo and Arrow, said footfalls had reduced and Diwali sales could be impacted. “We will withdraw our brands from e-commerce portals if they continue to discount these,” he said.
Himanshu Chakrawarti, CEO of Essar-owned The MobileStore, said: “The massive uplift which is normally there during Diwali season is not that sharp this time.” The impact of online sales will be sharper, going ahead, he said. “We need to make ourselves sharper.” That explains the company's adline -- 'We beat online like no one else can.'
That said, the next quarterly numbers for retail companies are expected to be robust and they are likely to post revenue growth of 15-33% in the quarter, said analysts. Titan is expected to gain due to closure of gold deposit schemes, as most of the redemption money will be used to buy jewellery.
Both Shoppers Stop and Future Retail are likely to post double-digit same-store sales growth (SSSG) in the quarter.
'We expect Future Retail to witness SSSG of 12 per cent and Shoppers Stop to report SSSG of 16% and eight per cent in the departmental and HyperCity segment, respectively,' says Bharat Chhoda of ICICI Securities.
End-season sales and an improved demand environment at the onset of the festive season are key reasons.
(Reporting by Raghavendra Kamath & Sheetal Agarwal from Mumbai, Mahesh Kulkarni from Bangalore, Mayank Mishra from New Delhi, Namrata Acharya from Kolkata and Gireesh Babu in Chennai)
Come Diwali, more shoppers than ever will turn to phones and laptops for their gift shopping, as India’s ecommerce growth powers on through the Covid-19 crisis. RedSeer Consulting’s latest report crunches the numbers.
The consulting firm expects festive sales in 2020 to grow by 50% compared to the 2019 festive season – considerably higher than the 30% jump over the previous year. Several factors will contribute to the boom this year, with most revolving around Covid-19 or its widespread repercussions.
“Covid-19 enabled massive growth in new shoppers as consumers now more than ever prefer to shop in a manner that is convenient, safe and hygienic and the e-commerce space meets these requirements,” explained Mrigank Gutgutia, Director of Ecommerce at RedSeer Consulting. According to Gutgutia, the pre-season survey has already shown signs of ecommerce dominance.
The result is that festive sales this year will likely amount to $4 billion – the highest ever for a festive period. The figures reflect a combination of strong fundamentals and favourable market conditions. Ecommerce in India has already been a bright spot for several years, particularly since 2015 when telecom giant Reliance launched its Jio network.
Through Jio’s cheap data packages, online commerce was suddenly activated among India’s consumer base of more than a billion people. Ecommerce grew at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25% over 2016 and 2017, and a further 30% over the last two years. By 2019, the market was worth more than $27 billion.
As mentioned, the biggest growth driver was the spread of internet accessibility, from the metropolitan Hindi/English speaking ranks known as India to Bharat – tier two cities and rural areas that commonly speak regional languages. RedSeer reports that the spread of ecommerce from India to Bharat is visible even in the festive sales this year.
In fact, the researchers note that for the first time ever retailers have also acted on this distinction, distributing a number of marketing campaigns and even their sales channels via WhatsApp or other video-based releases. Add to this the concerns around Covid-19 and visiting local shopping centres, and the ecommerce consumer base for this festive season gets a tremendous leg up.
The analysis suggests that up to 50 million people will shop online this festive season. To put this in perspective, that’s a 70% jump from the same time last year, when online shoppers amounted to just under 30 million. Testament to decentralisation efforts is that Tier 2 cities will account for 50% of all online shoppers.
Brick and mortar?
So retailers have been successful in reaching a wider consumer base, although this is a trend born more out of necessity than anything else. Where ecommerce is skyrocketing in India, sales from brick and mortar stores has all but stopped. Those elements within India’s retail sector that were organised have had no choice but to invest in online and omnichannel capabilities to meet consumer needs under Covid-19.
A financial burden in the short term; this scenario might just be a blessing in disguise for retailers in India, setting them up for the digitalised consumer model of the future. Going forth, having an established ecommerce and omnichannel infrastructure will help reach an ever-expanding consumer base in India that is increasingly digitalised.
In fact, the same is true for India's ecommerce landscape as a whole. Uncertainty looms on whether a second lockdown will be necessary in the short term, and if consumers will ever return to pre-pandemic consumption patterns even in the medium to long term. A strong ecommerce landscape will be crucial in this scenario, and the initial months of the pandemic have been a catalyst from this perspective.
Will Diwali Ecommerce Boom Hurt Brick And Mortar Retailers List
Such is the impetus given to ecommerce in India this year that RedSeer Consulting anticipates growth of 40% for the segment for the course of the 2020 commercial year. Online sales amounted to $27 billion by the end of last year, and will likely reach a value of $38 billion by the end of this year according to the report.
Year after year, RedSeer Consulting has been reporting growth in online festive sales, although few reports have portrayed the size and scale of growth as the latest one, which comes amid a bumper year for ecommerce in India and across the world.
Subscribe to our newsletter.
Will Diwali Ecommerce Boom Hurt Brick And Mortar Retailers Like