Positive festive season driven by upbeat consumer sentiment

Since the economic slowdown of 2008-09, this year’s festive season is surely and indicator of the positive times ahead. The season is witnessing green shoots of recovery with retail industry players reporting rise in footfall and sales. Not only online but even offline retail firms are busy catering to the last minute orders being placed by an upbeat consumer, who is splurging on variety of good this festive season.

Festive boom brings cheer to cash registers

Witnessing demand, retail players not only increased their marketing spend but also extended their sale season that offered lucrative deals and discounts. The strategy has worked well for ecommerce ventures but it was also because consumers’ are willingness to spend. As Arvind Singhal, Chairman, Technopak Advisors points out, from a consumption standpoint, this is the best festive season since 2009. And even offline retailers such as Future Group, Arvind Brands and Shoppers Stop are witnessing double-digit sales growth.

Kumar Rajagopalan, Chief Executive, Retailers Association of India (RAI) says, eastern India saw around 15 percent rise in retail sales around Dussera and it believes that during Diwali the sector would witness growth of 10-15 percent against 10 percent last year. He said that while ecommerce firms are witnessing sales in specific categories, such as mobile phones, brick and mortar is showing good results across every category.

Bonanza season for top ecom players

After failing to cash in on the opportunity around the festive season last year, all three leading ecommerce players viz Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal witnessed a bumper opening to their sale events. Amazon India’s 'The Great Indian Festive Sale', Flipkart's 'Big Billion Days' and Snapdeal's 'Diwali Sale' kicked-off around the same time with customers rushing in to grab the deals on offer.

Amazon India said the first day of the sale event was the biggest sales day for the company since it was two times bigger than the ‘The Great Indian Freedom Sale’ and four times bigger than the peak season around last Diwali. Flipkart, on the other hand, which was heavily criticised for its inability to handle the crows last year, claims to have sold 10 lakh products on October 13, 2015 in the first 10 hours of 'The Big Billion Days' five-day sale event. The highest traffic on the Flipkart website was drawn from cities like Bengaluru, Delhi and Chennai along with Tier II towns such as Ludhiana, Lucknow and Bhopal.

Amazon saw 70 percent customer shopping on their mobile app with new customers signing in from cities like Aurangabad, Malappuram, Dhanbad, Kannur, Tiruchirappalli, Jamshedpur, among others. And Snapdeal, which announced ‘Electronics Monday Sale’ on October 12, 2015, also saw sales exceed expectation with an enthusiastic response from customers across the country, with the company close to crossing 100 million dollars (Rs 650 crores) in sales by end of that day.

As per an Assocham report, consumers are expected to splurge about Rs 52,000 crores on shopping during this festive season that began with Navaratra and will go on till Christmas. “Despite economic slowdown, the online shopping marts are expecting to rake in as much as 40-45 percent more in sales during the festive season,” the report said. Considering the current trend, Assocham also expects a five-fold rise in revenue generation of ecommerce sites this year as compared to the previous year.