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As the first leg of the festive season sale commenced last week, e-commerce players have gone all out with their advertising and marketing efforts to gain the maximum chunk of the consumers’ wallets.
Right from Flipkart’s multi-lingual print ad or OOH or in-flight iPhone 14 price drop announcement, to Kapil Sharma and Pooja Hegde taking over the screens for Meesho, Amazon India’s 20 seconder musical #DibbeKhulengeKhulengiKhushiyaan or Myntra uniting the newlywed Shershaah couple for their first Diwali, or JioMart announcing Captain Cool as their brand ambassador and collaborated with other renowned celebs such as Zakir Khan and Prajakta Koli amongst others for its social media campaigns, the ad momentum for e-commerce platforms have definitely been on a roll.
That being said, the pre-festive season sale has also ushered this time around and in turn brought in remarkable success for various e-commerce players, due to which the expectations from the festive season have also reached a renewed height.
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As per Megha Agarwal, CXO-Growth, Meesho, the ‘truly e-commerce marketplace’ had achieved an impressive feat of securing close to 1 crore orders over the course of 4 sale days encompassing Onam, Raksha Bandhan and Ganesh Chaturthi along with 50 lakhs new customers joining the platform.
Of this, the company saw nearly 75% of the demand coming from tier 2+ markets like Amravati, Aurangabad, Dehradun, Nellore, Solapur, and Warangal.
"As we gear up for the upcoming festivities, we are certain to see the momentum uplift for categories such as Personal Care and Beauty, Home and Kitchen as well as Electronic Accessories to grow by more than 100%, when compared to 2022. Our strategic efforts, including selection enhancement and improvements with respect to product discovery, have contributed significantly to improving order growth and enabled our customers to fulfil their aspirations at the best price points,” she said.
Flipkart’s hyper-value e-commerce platform, Shopsy, also saw a 2.4x surge in daily demand along with 2x customer growth during the third edition of ‘Grand Shopsy Mela’, of which over 60% of customers came from Tier 3+ cities, including Medinipur, Mathura and Jalgaon. In fact, states that contributed to the highest orders were Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Maharashtra with over 60% of the customers from Tier 3+ cities across the country.
As customers in Tier 2+ cities shopped for fashion, home essentials, beauty and electronic
products, the event propelled economic growth for lakhs of regional sellers.
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According to Kapil Thirani, Head of Shopsy, Flipkart, Shopsy aims to continue offering an expansive range of engaging products for customers at affordable prices while being a value-based and reliable platform. It has strived to deliver on its commitment to building a community that truly levels the playing field of e-commerce in the country.
“Since its launch in July 2021, Shopsy’s vision has been to make digital commerce accessible across India through a zero-commission marketplace. Today, Shopsy provides 160 million products across 1300+ categories for customers across India. Further, Shopsy will bring its wide range of value-based products for consumers, especially in Tier 2 to Tier 4 markets, during Flipkart’s The Big Billion Days 2023,” he added.
Not only Shopsy, but also Cleartrip, a Flipkart company, has also geared up for one of the biggest travel extravaganza of the year by bringing Flipkart’s flagship event, ‘The Big Billion Days’ (TBBD) on its platform from 8 to 15 October 2023 (Sale starts early on Cleartrip on 7 October 2023).
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Speaking about the same, Ayyappan R., CEO, Cleartrip, stated, “At Cleartrip, value, affordability, and transparency are tenets of an elevated customer experience. The festive season is the most important period for our entire travel ecosystem. With our unbeatable deals during TBBD, we plan to change the way India thinks about travel.”
“We are thrilled to continue Flipkart’s legacy of delivering value and innovation with The Big Billion Days 2023. We also look forward to advancing our aspiration of democratising travel with industry-first offerings and a personalised user experience,” he added.
As per a recent report launched by Redseer Strategy Consultants on the Indian festive season, online sellers expect at least a 15% jump in festive sales on a year-on-year basis and owing to the same, there is an anticipation of 15% spending growth vs last year’s festive season and 50% ad spending growth vs business as usual (BAU) periods of this year.
The report also highlights that even the smaller sellers are anticipated to spend 22% more on ads and are bullish on overall sales growth which can be as high as 75% this time around on a YoY basis.
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Vidya Sankar, Senior Vice-President, Dentsu Creative India, told BestMediaInfo.com that in his views, the E-commerce GMV is expected to grow at 18-20% to reach Rs 90,000 crore and that the online growth is driven by growing online shoppers especially from tier-2 and tier-3 cities, reducing delivery time and improving customer experience.
“Recent consumer sentiment analysis of Urban India also suggests that 87% of consumers in metros and 86% across tier-2 cities (population 10-40 Lakh) prefer to shop online this festive period,” he said in support of his statement.
As per the recent study conducted by Nielsen Media (commissioned by Amazon India) consumers across India are bullish, excited and more eager than ever to shop online during this festive season, so much so that 81% of consumers intend to shop online during this festive season and every 1 in 2 consumers is willing to increase the spending on a YoY basis.
Moreover, the report also pointed out that over 75% of consumers trust e-commerce platforms to offer genuine products and find it most convenient for festive shopping.
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As per Saurabh Srivastava, Vice-President, Amazon Fashion India, “Amazon Great Indian Festival 2023 will deliver unparalleled shopping experiences, and this year promises to be bigger and better.”
“Delhi is one of the top performing cities for Amazon Fashion. We have observed an increase in demand for premium products from Delhi’s fashion enthusiasts and Gen Zs are opting for K-pop-inspired (Korean) and nostalgia-driven trends, such as the '90s and early 2000s styles,” he added.
In the first four days of the e-commerce festive season sale, last year, the e-commerce category sold goods worth Rs 24,500 crore (USD 3.5 billion), as per a report carried out by Redseer.
The first part of the season sale, as per the report, included Flipkart’s Big Billion Days, Amazon’s Great Indian Festival, Meesho’s Mega Blockbuster Sale along with Myntra, Ajio, Nykaa, etc.
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As per Gopal Asthana, CEO, Tata CLiQ, sale during the festive period is a key growth driver for the e-commerce sector because the festive season historically has been the high-spending season for the Indian economy.
“Even traditional retail sees a boom during this season. Further, many of the sale events, including the 10.10 sale across Tata CLiQ, Tata CLiQ Luxury, and Tata CLiQ Palette, have a high recall value, and hence, consumers anticipate and wait for them for their festive shopping. This is a great time to onboard new consumers into the category or brand for all players on the back of aggressive offers and pricing offered by the brand partners,” he opined.
In his view, even though the first sale wave has been pushed ahead by a few days, that is fundamentally because of this year’s festive cycle- the Diwali week is 20 days later this year than in 2022, and hence, the sale waves are aligned with the delay in the shopping cycle that the e-commerce platforms anticipate.
“We expect no impact on business as the sale events are still planned to capture the peak of consumer intent and festive demand. In addition, our platform’s flagship event, 10.10 Sale, is slated to capture customer demand at peak pre-festive shopping occasions for Navratri, Durga Puja, and Dussehra and is scheduled from October 6th onwards across all three platforms,” he added.
The 10.10 festive sale will run across all three- Tata CLiQ, Tata CLiQ Luxury, and Tata CLiQ Palette and is likely to bring in 50–60% growth in revenue over the past year for the first two platforms which deal with lifestyle and luxury, in his opinion. However, for Tata CLiQ palette, the beauty matchmaker which caters to 18+ years old female-leaning metro and urban city dwellers, he expects to see a significant increase in festive shopping for self and gifting along with a surge in categories like make-up, fragrances, and skincare.
“From a growth perspective, we usually witness a 50% month-on-month jump from pre-festive to the festive shopping season. We have increased our ad spends to match our growth expectations across the three platforms. In addition, all three platforms are actively working with content creators for social media marketing and leveraging AI to create social, CRM, and brand content,” he stated further.
Dentsu Creative’s Sankar also mentioned that in terms of ROI, this festive season, e-commerce sales are expected to increase by 10% compared to 3% YoY growth and sensing this opportunity, various e-commerce brands are trying to communicate a wide selection of products, value with competitive pricing and convenience of easy returns and exchange among growth markets especially in Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns, and as a result, brands are expected to increase their ad spends significantly.
“This surge in spending is driven by increased spending on Digital platforms (Social, OTT, Programmatic) TV and CTV, and Newspapers. Essentially, mass media spending is expected to grow (OTT, TV) disproportionately due to World Cup and Festive premieres to reach wider audiences at one go and Digital to be always on to target customers based on their preferences and behaviour,” he stated.
Moreover, he also emphasised that a trend which is also gaining prominence for e-commerce players is leveraging influencer collaborations for driving brand preference along with OOH for aiding in top-of-mind awareness.
“During the festive season, e-commerce platforms increase their ad spends significantly and the same is driven by the need to grab the eyeballs of the vast customer base actively seeking festive deals and offers. As a result, leading brands have tie-ups with the top celebrities to grab eyeballs and capitalise on their reach to garner more engagement and time spent on the platform. Extensive ATL, BTL and Digital marketing campaigns build hype and anticipation for the upcoming sales events, drawing more customers to the platform,” he opined.
This time around as well, Flipkart has roped in celebrities for the promotion of its Big Billion Days Sale.
Similarly, Meesho also leveraged celebrities like Pooja Hegde and Kapil Sharma for its ad campaign for the Mega Blockbuster Sale.
Myntra also onboarded Siddharth Malhotra and Kiara Advani, the newlywed Sher Shah couple for its ad campaign.
On the other hand, Amazon India has played on its enticing deals and no-extra charge feature as part of its #DibbeKhulengeKhulengiKhushiyaan.
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