According to Redseer’s recent survey, 83% of the respondents surveyed indicated willingness to buy this festive season. This optimism is not just limited to consumers, but sellers are also expecting higher increase in sales.
The positive sentiments are driven by demand for fashion, mobiles, electronics and large appliances. Consumer sentiment is particularly bullish for fashion and electronics this festive season, measured by increasing willingness of consumers to shop for these categories compared to last year. For instance, 63% of consumer are planning to spend on fashion categories compared to 56% last year while 53% of consumers are going to spend on electronics compared to 44% last year.
Meanwhile, online fashion is only going to get bigger during the festive sale this year.The growth of this segment is being driven by an expanding customer base from Tier 2+ cities and first-time customers who start their online shopping journey with fashion.
“The share of fashion in overall festive sale in festive week 1 is estimated to increase by 9pp from 2018-22. Online fashion has grown 4x in the last four years compared to 3x growth for overall e-tail. Fuelling this growth is the increasing shopper base from tier 2+ cities resulting in 2.5x growth in fashion shoppers in the last 4 years,” says Sanjay Kothari, Associate Partner, Redseer Strategy Consultants.
Sellers are betting aggressively on fashion
Festive sales will see higher participation from fashion sellers this year compared to other categories. “Being a fashion seller, I am hopeful that I will witness 2x to 4x growth,” says a seller, while another adds, “We have seen a surge in the fashion sales in the last few quarters and hoping the same for festive (season) as well.”
Sellers on eCommerce platforms are also optimistic about volume growth during the festive season. Most sellers are expecting robust 20%+ growth, 1.2x higher than last year’s festive sales, driven by better consumer awareness, stronger support from the platforms and better sales planning by the sellers and the platforms. However, sellers are planning to offer slightly lower discounts than last year.
Strong platform-selling partnership
This festive season will see a stronger platform-seller partnership. Sellers are largely satisfied with the support on planning and management extended by the eCommerce platforms leading up to the festive period.
In a report released earlier this month, Redseer predicted the festive sales to grow to $5.9 bn this year during festive week 1 and $11.8 bn GMV during the whole festive month.
