54% of urban Indians won’t shop online if there are no discounts: Survey

54% of urban Indians won’t shop online if there are no discounts: Survey

By Pranati Deva, ECONOMICTIMES.COM | Sep 05, 2016, 12.48 PM IST

NEW DELHI: Even as Indian e-commerce firms look at ways to plug freebies to keep their coffers running, a new survey says 54% of urban Indians won’t shop online if there are no discounts.

An app-based poll conducted by Inshorts and Ipsos says that if the price of a product is same in retail market near their homes, the consumers won’t prefer buying it online.

Close to 1.5 lakh respondents took part in the poll, which was done across top metros such as New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh and Lucknow. 80% of the respondents were under-35 years of age.

The finding is definitely worrying for e-tailers after the government changed FDI rules and put restrictions on discounts. It also debunks a recent Google report that said that discounts were no longer a factor for the Indian online consumers.

Google India head Rajan Anandan says that India’s most-valued online retailers such as Flipkart and Snapdeal may have to go through a ten-year wait to transform into mega businesses as purchasing power of consumers today is not yet sufficient to help internet companies deliver profits.

“They are yet to devise solutions that will attract this new set of customers,” he added.

(Source – http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/se...)