Consumers forecast to spend `25,000 cr this festive season

As festivals line up, consumers are expected to spend Rs 25,000 crore this festive season, a rise of 25 per cent, as against Rs 20,000 crore spent in the year ago period, according to Assocham.

The festive season starting with Navratri on Saturday is likely to register record sales and highest-ever purchase rate per minute for e-commerce giants as most people deferred their purchasing plans due to ‘pitra paksha’, the Assocham survey-cum-analysis said.

The industry body said it interacted with about 2,500 working professionals in age group 25-40 years from diverse sectors in 10 prominent cities to ascertain their shopping plans for the upcoming festive season.

The cities include Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow.

“This is expected to be the busiest festive season for e-commerce companies as Indian consumers are likely to spend up to Rs 25,000 crore and more as against over Rs 20,000 crore spent in festive season last year thereby registering about 25 per cent growth,” said D S Rawat, General Secretary, Assocham.

“About 60 per cent of the total respondents said they are ready with their shopping lists and will prefer online shopping over standing long hours in store aisles, while most of the remaining opted for shopping at physical brick and mortar outlets,” the survey of Assocham Social Development Foundation highlights.

People are ready to grab the deals and discounts offered by e-tailers on everything from apparels to cosmetics, jewellery to mobiles, laptop, television, it said.

Ease of shopping, delivery options, diverse payment modes, better offers and other such factors are key reasons to shop in the festive season starting with Navratri, followed by a Dussera and Diwali, and continue til new year, it added.

As part of its analysis, Assocham also sought opinions of various experts in the field of advanced research,analytics and digital intelligence services specialising in communications insights and community trends. .The professionals surveyed were in the age group of 25-40 years from sectors like  utomobile, biotechnology, BFSI etc.