Most consumers want e-com sales events to stay: Survey

A large majority of consumers do not want the government to restrict heavy discounts and sales offers by e-commerce companies, says a survey. Sales events made products affordable and allowed consumers to save more and spend less.

Around 72 per cent consumers who participated in the survey conducted by community social media platform LocalCircles, responded in the negative when asked about restricting sales events. The online survey received over 82,000 responses from consumers residing in 394 districts. Only 19 per cent wanted the sales events to be restricted.

Restriction on sales events was a major concern of the consumers. About 54 per cent said sales events allowed them to buy things they normally cannot in terms of selection or price, 14 per cent said these allow them to save to buy more and 31 per cent wanted to be careful with their spending in the pandemic times.

Around 47 per cent consumers expect the pandemic uncertainty to last 6-12 months in their household budget planning, 49 per cent expects their household savings to decline in FY22, while 79 per cent consumers believe their household earnings will reduce in the current financial year. In such circumstances, many consumers have expressed that they are seeking maximum value from every rupee that they are spending.

For 49 per cent consumers, e-commerce has been their preferred mode of buying in the last 12 months. Around 26 per cent preferred visiting malls and local retailers while 22 per cent preferred calling local retailers for home delivery.

Most consumers are now making informed decisions by looking for prices online, calling local retail stores, negotiating and making faster purchasing decisions where they find the best price and delivery time combination.

When asked how often they looked for country of origin information on ecommerce platforms in the last six months, 43 per cent said that they did it for all purchases, 13 per cent for 25-50 per cent of the purchases, 4 per cent for 10-25 per cent purchases and 26 per cent did not look for the information.

Meanwhile, indistry body IAMAI said the proposed e-commerce regulations could negatively impact consumer interest, while creating a high level of uncertainty and increase compliance burden for not just e-commerce companies but MSMEs providing services to online retailers.

The association said the regulations fail to provide a level-playing field between online and offline ecommerce/retail.