Fashion will be the growth engine for first phase of online festive season sale

Average spend per consumer is likely to remain the same as last year during the online festive season sale, according to Bengaluru-based strategy consulting firm, RedSeer Consulting. This is likely driven by frequent purchases by consumers throughout the year, said Ujjwal Chaudhry, Partner at Redseer.

He added that the average spend per customer had come down from Rs 7,350 in 2018 to Rs 5,200 per customer in 2020-21 due to frequent purchases and shrinking share of high-value items like smartphones and white goods during the festive sales. 

The firm’s recent findings which capture the ecommerce sales performance from September 22 to September 25 indicate that Flipkartand Amazon India will continue to hold the largest market share for the first phase of festive season sales.

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Usually ecommerce companies hold upto three sales during the festive season, starting ahead of Dusshera and ending with Diwali. The first sale event or first week of sales usually makes up for nearly 60% of total sales during the one-month period. 

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

Better start to festive sales over last year

The report said that between 50 to 55 million shoppers made purchases during the first four days of the festive season. The first four days also accounted for nearly 60% of Redseer’s projection of total sales of $5.9 billion for the first week. A similar time frame contributed to 59% of the first week’s sales projections in 2021, indicating a marginal improvement in demand in the current year. 

Fashion to drive growth

In terms of Gross Merchandise Value (GMV, a metric for total sales made), Rs 5,500 crore worth of fashion items were sold during the first four days of the ecommerce festive sales. Sales jumped by 4.5-times from Business As Usual (BAU) days in GMV terms. Majority sales were in the non-branded fashion category thus far.

Demand for premium smartphones goes up

The sale of premium smartphones including iPhones 12 and 13, as well as OnePlus drove the mobile sales for the first four days of the sales, with nearly Rs 11,000 crore worth of mobiles sold by large ecommerce players. In volume terms, the first week of festive sales will see nearly 1 crore units being sold.

Tier 2 cities show increased demand

Nearly 80% of the demand came from non-metros while 20% shoppers were from metros. The growth in share of Tier 2 shoppers is driven by curated selection for the target group and adoption of new commerce. According to Redseer, Metro refers to the top nine cities including Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Pune, Ahmedabad and Surat.