Indian buyer look for Convenience & Discounts while buying online

Surprise! Surprise!! A recent survey says that nearly 50% of Indians feel that service is more important than price Recent survey proving it to be a myth that India is an extremely price conscious market. That’s the nice way of saying we don’t mind cheap goods. Beyond wide range of choice buyer look forward for deep discounts & service. Indian consumer now talks about convenience and shopping experience over cost and variety. Seems like a good trend for India retail but this will make companies more conscious about delivery what they promise.

Top searched shopping sites in India

1.Flipkart.com

2.Homeshop18.com

3.Snapdeal.com

4. Bookmyshow.com

5. Myntra.com

6. Paytm.in

7. Olx.in

8.Jabong.com

9.Fashionandyou.com

10.Naaptol.com

Source:- Google Zeitgeist 2012

Indian Consumer More Vocal About Customer Care Services

In India, people shout more on customer care executive than any other part of the world. Indians want personalized and customized services. People in India like to know name of the executive and want to see whom they are seeking support. Consumer threatens to switch to the competitors to get extra benefits. Probably Jago Grahak Jago campaign has helped consumer in putting their say upfront.

American Express and global research firm 'echo' conducted a survey and below are the findings-

• 64% of Indians lose their temper with a customer service executive Vs world’s other markets average of 48%
• 61% insisted on speaking to a supervisor 
• 12% of Indians use profanities or abusive language as against an average of 7% globally 
•  Indians are becoming quite vocal about poor quality service too as each one tells approximately 47 people about their bad experience 
• One out of every five consumers feels businesses pay less attention to providing good customer service 
• four out of five believe that smaller businesses give more importance to customer service than large ones 
• Most interesting finding - When customers know that a company is listening to them and addressing their needs quickly and responsively, they will not only spend more - they will spread the word to others as well

So, Indian consumers seems very honest. If they are satisfied they create buzz about that and if they get dis-satisfied then also they create lot of noise. Indian consumer wants little extra attention in term of after sales service. Wants more transparent system and tries to show they know how they can justice legally if they feel cheated.

-Nikhil

Cash Vs Card: Card is winning race in emerging markets

Convenience, security and better shopping experience playing key role in making card winner over cash. Electronic payments can revolutionise the way people pay. The increasing benefits of electronic payments worldwide can be seen in their rapid growth across many emerging markets. According to the World Payments Report 2010, non-cash payments in Russia rose 66 percent between 2008 and 2009, while China (+29 percent) and South Africa (+25 percent) also posted large gains. 

While India has seen similar growth numbers in debit cards (+42% in FY2009-10 compared to the previous financial year, cards still account for less than 5 percent of consumer spending.

Why pay by card?

Increasing card usage often depends on increasing consumers’ awareness of the benefits of using them. These include:

Convenience and control: Cards allow people to shop and manage their spending without the need to carry cash. Cardholders can choose between using debit cards which gives them the security of knowing there will be no interest payments on purchases or using credit cards for greater flexibility.

• Greater security
• Time Saving
• Enables online shopping
• More payment options
• Better consumer control

Cash vs cards – The advantages of electronic payments

This table below illustrates the typical advantages that card payments offer consumers over cash. Not all card products carry the same level of functionality. 

	Cash	Debit cards	Credit cards
Budget control	Some	Yes	Some
Replaced if lost	No	Yes	Yes
Monthly statements	No	Yes	Yes
Transaction insurance protection	No	No	Yes
Card and transaction security features	No	Yes	Yes
Reward programmes	No	Yes	Yes
Revolving credit	No		Yes
SMS transaction alerts	No	Yes	Yes

India is already making rapid progress in developing electronic payments. Several industry-leading technology applications are already widely used to improve customer service and security. For example, Indian banks send SMS messages to clients after they have made an ATM withdrawal so that cardholders get confirmation that a transaction was carried out on their account. Value-added applications like this encourage more people to pay with cards.

Source-http://www.indiainfoline.com

Cash on Delivery: Gain for Customers, Pain for Service Providers

Shop online even you do not have credit card..

Online travel service providers, such as Yatra, Makemytrip and Travelmasti, are strengthening offline offerings to make people who do not have access to credit cards avail of their services, as they look to expand consumer base.

After witnessing success of Cash on Delivery' (COD), Yatra has  announced launch of a new 'Cash on Delivery' (COD) service that enables the consumers to make bookings online or through a call centre and make payment in cash. Similarly, while Travelmasti is looking to double the number of retail outlets in the next two years, Makemytrip has recently launched a new mobile application to give consumers an additional platform.

Online shopping sites like eBay, Home Shop18, Tradus and timtara are already banking big time on COD.  There are few factors behind success of COD-

·         In India people have fear factor while using their credit card online.

·         Many people do not have Credit Card

·         COD orders can be taking over phone, so customer need not to be internet user

·         At times,  Indians do not want to spend in advance

In such instances COD is very fruitful from customer end. But from service provider end its not preferable though it increases the business 50-60% straight away.

 2 biggest challenges are-

·         In COD, payment collection cycle gets prolonged as your courier partner collects money and from them you get your money after deducting courier COD charges.

·         Return rate in case of COD is very high as customer anytime can refuse to accept his order. Customer has not paid in advace, you sent order and somehow customer’s mid git changed, he simply deny to accept. But service provider already invested courier to & fro charges and time for the same.

Thus, companies in e-commerce domain adding COD feature to enhance thir reach and volume of business. It really good option from customer’s end but really hard to manage from seller’s end.

Nikhil Kunwar