Are you shopping discounts online?

This diwali season its raining discounts for the buyers. Online is the new buzzword for shopping and it’s very easy to compare and find out which website has better discounts on your favourite products. Sitting in Gurgaon, my father ordered his favorite Chirag din shirts from Jabong.com, yes the online fever is catching across people of all age groups. My teenager cousin does not prefer going to malls for shopping, he rather go on a date with his girl friend and eat at the mall but for shopping he prefers flipkart. whether to buy his next mobile phone or to read a new book. The advantages are plenty. You get to read the customer reviews, compare prices and get details on all the features. They also give a 30 day replacement guarantee.

With online retailers such as Flipkart and Amazon seen cornering a chunk of the expected growth in India’s overall modern retailing, industry insiders say a lot of retailers are nervous.

Select City walk, Delhi is revamping it’s food court by replacing non-branded outlets with branded food sellers like Saravana Bhavan and some international cuisine specialists. “Very few people come to malls only for shopping. They come to us for the whole experience. That is why we have always believed in making the whole experience attractive,” said Arjun Sharma, director at Select Citywalk. A lot of clothing stores are postponing their expansion plans due to leading online retail sites gaining a larger share. A gurgaon resident says “I rather buy two tops at a discounted rate online than go to a branded store which has no discounts running and low on variety.”
Here is a major advantage compared to a brick and mortar store which has less storage and less options.

Delhi NCR people spend most of their income on food and shopping. For food, people regularly choose where they are going to eat or ordering for home delivery on websites such as zomato, timescity and foodpanda, which offer discounts from their own pockets to add to the customers delight.

A customer says, “We go on foodpanda and order for our office parties as they give huge discounts on bulk orders”. Gone are the days when people preferred to order food at home directly from the restaurant, when you have sites like these, you rather get a better deal. Groupon, Timesdeal and what not are doing good business due to their great deals on entertainment, travel and healthcare. “We even get a lot of people booking hotel’s with us” says a Groupon executive. The customer research says that as soon as a customer hears the word discount, his eyes pop up. And that fact can’t be ignored. So if you are a new restaurant you have got to be on these sites for creating footfall and then later when you are doing good, you can go slow with the heavy discounting and offer something on bulk orders or to get repeat customers.

It’s not an easy time even for home delivery outlets in gurgaon, says Paul, owner of Grill & Wok in DLF 3, “we now spend huge chunk of our marketing budget online. If we don’t have a banner on zomato for a few weeks, the calls keep dropping. These sites are creating a monopoly and if you are not on them, you feel left out.As it is, its a highly competitive market here.” As they say in food business, you gotta be on your toes if you want to be in business.

India’s internet user base is expected to grow to over 400 million in the next five years, according to a recent report by consultancy firm Technopak. The size of the Indian e-tailing market at present is $2 billion, and is expected to reach anywhere between $19 billion and $38 billion by the end of this decade, the Technopak report added.

The consumer era has just begun and if trends are to be believed, India has already surpassed the US and other developed nations in shopping online and it’s set to grow much faster now.