Online Shopping: Current and Future Scenario in India

Online shopping in India has escalated so much so India ranks third in the e-commerce engagement globally. The past few decades have seen an upward shift as the extensive shopping lists have been long replaced with e-shopping, web-shopping or virtual media shopping.

Since it’s advent in India in 2002, originally for IRCTC Online Passenger Reservation system for trains, e-commerce is on a high run among the Indian citizenry ever since. Be it buying or selling, e-commerce is serving a rather crucial role in the lives of the people. Online shopping is one such boon that brought relief in online shoppers lives. 

The total worth of e-commerce activities had recorded, according to the Managing Director of Google, an increase to 8 million users shopping online in 2012. While 99 million urban consumers were recorded for the huge data, 31 million online shoppers were recorded from the rural areas of India. Thus, greater propensity to consume and growing inclination towards online shopping is feeding to the immense size of the online shoppers in India. 

The following two factors are the added advantages to the scope of online shopping:-

Convenience 

Instead of having to take out dear time from busy schedules only to visit busy marketplaces and malls, waiting in line, not sure if their choice of products be available. Shoppers today consider shopping a task completed and look for easy alternatives. Online shoppers can steer clear of the holiday rush by instead buying goods online, from the comfort of their homes. The only effort required of them is to log on to a shopping website and look for products as per their choice with tools like customized search and sorting modes.

Busy work schedule, an aversion to heavy traffic, or simply having to wait in line are a few common reasons why online shopping saves the day. Online shopping gives the freedom to shop for products or avail services irrespective of what time of the day is it. Holiday rush and last-minute shopping can be done without having to wait in long queues like at the retail stores. Shopping online gives the leverage of utilising the excess time in other activities without taking up much of the time.

Competitive prices

Although online shopping has been doing rounds since the year 2002, but it is the discounted model adopted by various businesses to provide huge discounts to prospective online shoppers. The degree of amalgamation of buyers and sellers on this virtual platform saw growing acceptance. The popularity for the discounted model re-launched the perspective of online shopping in India. Soon many businesses started to follow the foot-steps. Today, online shopping is synonymous to deep discounts and attractive deals all year round, which is not the scenario in their brick and mortar counterparts.

Future of Online Shopping

According to a survey, the online retail in India is on a constant growth trajectory and is likely to touch 70 billion by the end of 2015. Also paving the path ahead is the report by Boston Consultancy Group, which reflects that the volume of online shoppers is going to increase three-folds from a 111 billion consumer base in 2011 to a staggering 330 million by the end of the year 2016. Thus, online shopping is on the way of revolutionizing the Indian retail industry. 

Moreover, the tier 2 and the tier 3 cities beyond the boundaries of metros are the growing hubs where the Internet usage has increased drastically over the last decade. Online shopping is a part of this maneuvering driving online sales in India.