Snapdeal survey says 60 percent online sales come from non-metro cities

Snapdeal survey says 60 percent online sales come from non-metro cities

With the demand for digital lifestyle continuing to be robust from across India, nearly 60 per cent of online sales were in Tier II cities and beyond, according to a survey of trends by e-commerce platform Snapdeal.

“The delivery of functional benefits like speed, convenience and value also resulted in massive growth from non-metro cities in India,” Vishal Chadha, Senior Vice President (Business) Snapdeal, said in a statement on Tuesday.

The survey showed that Delhi-NCR topped as the most online shopping-savvy metro city in India, followed by Bengaluru and Mumbai. Pune emerged as the leader amongst all Tier I city shoppers.

Metros and Tier I cities accounted only for 40 per cent of the sales during the year.

Further, online make-up and grooming products seem to be in vogue this 2016, the statement said.

While make-up category for women saw a whopping overall growth of 345 per cent year-on-year, personal care and grooming stood out as a popular category among men with an increase of 58 per cent.

Women in the northern region of the country bought 32 per cent of online make-up products in 2016.

Women in New Delhi — with 12 per cent of sales — became the highest contributor for make-up products sales, men in Delhi purchased the most shaving and grooming products.

The sale of skin care category grew by 77 per cent with Kolkata contributing 125 per cent to the sales followed by Bengaluru.

“We are rapidly expanding our assortment in line with the needs and expectations of our existing users and also to cater to the next 100 million online shoppers from across India,” Chadha said.

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Amazon ships more than 1 billion items during 2016 holiday season; calls it best ever

Amazon ships more than 1 billion items during 2016 holiday season; calls it best ever

                               

Amazon.com Inc said it shipped more than 1 billion items worldwide this holiday season, which the top online retailer called its best ever, and its shares rose 1.6 percent in afternoon trade. The Amazon Echo home assistant and its smaller version, Echo Dot, topped the best-sellers list, said Jeff Wilke, chief executive of Amazon’s worldwide consumer division, in a press release.

“Despite our best efforts and ramped-up production, we still had trouble keeping them in stock,” he said. Sales of voice-controlled Echo devices were nine times more than they were during last year’s holiday season, the company said. Amazon did not disclose comparable sales figures from a year earlier.

“It’s all relative to other numbers that they’ve never told us,” said analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research. Amazon likely sold between 4 million and 5 million devices this year to date with Alexa, the voice-controlled assistant on the Echo, estimated Morningstar analyst R.J. Hottovy in a research note. Shoppers can command the Echo to perform a host of tasks, from playing music to turning on Christmas lights.

“While Amazon’s device sales are still relatively small growth drivers currently, we believe the proliferation of these devices will drive more ubiquitous use of Amazon services over time,” said Baird Equity Research analyst Colin Sebastian in a note, pointing to customers ordering more items by speaking to the Echo.

More than 72 percent of Amazon’s customers worldwide shopped through mobile devices, the company added, and Dec. 19 was the busiest shopping day this holiday season. “Prime customers are spending twice as much as other consumers using Amazon and helping to fuel rapid revenue growth that few retailers with only a fraction of Amazon’s revenues are able to generate,” Retail Metrics President Ken Perkins wrote in a note last week.

Alexa and Amazon Dash, a one-button ordering service, are making it easier for shoppers to “skip the trip,” and will put more pressure on rival retailers as they try to garner in-store and web traffic, Perkins said. Other best sellers on Amazon included 72-pack Keurig K-Cups, the movie “Finding Dory,” Samsung Electronics Co Ltd’s Gear VR virtual reality headset and Nintendo Co Ltd’s Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon role-playing video games, the company said.

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