The Evolution Of The Online Shopping Trend In India

Online Shopping, a term that has a distinct meaning to a lot of people in India and as a matter of fact this phenomenon is still in its development stages in the country. Although, its inception began around a decade ago there were a lot of factors that contributed to this sector remaining unavailable to a lot of people. Some of the prime reasons being, the skepticism of people into not trusting the products they couldn’t directly see or believe. There were many companies who were trying their best to achieve the trust of people, but all one can say is it is still a work in progress. Things are quite different today and it was only possible because of the initiative taken by some of the pioneers in the Indian online shopping scenario. Let us take a look as to how this evolution was possible and who all contributed in making it happen along with its future prospects.

The Evolution began in several phases and it would be appropriate if they are presented according to the major milestones when it changed the mindset of a lot of people into trusting into online shopping.

Quite like the blockbuster film, Inception which was directed by the visionary filmmaker Christopher Nolan, something similar took place in India around the year 2008. Perhaps what you could call the online shopping sector was an open market in India at that time. There were not many companies who would rise to the occasion, as there was a big uncertainty whether Indians would go for something like this. Especially in a country where you are very economical for anything you purchase, now conducting e-commerce transaction over the internet was considered unsafe. Internet was catching up with a lot of people, but many were new to the use of it. It would have been a difficult process to make them clearly understand the concept. So a few people took a daring initiative with flipkart.com, they began by selling products like books majorly until they ventured into selling electronics products.

Once the establishment of the site took place, it wasn’t an easy thing to attract the attention of the average Indian consumer. So there was a need to introduce an offer that they couldn’t refuse. Thus, the website started giving certain options such as discounted prices and the choice of cash on delivery. There were several online websites that started showing up with this scheme around the beginning of 2012. By this time, many people started showing a considerable amount of interest in online shopping. There was a flurry of advertising campaigns on television and other mediums which instantly appealed to a lot of people and a lot of them started going online to give it a try. This itself was a big victory for many online shopping portals. As the word spread, there was lot of new offers that was introduced by these websites that further pulled in more customers.

When the trust was finally building, it was about time when someone introduced the 30 day return policy scheme. This was to establish the fact that if anyone is not happy with a particular product they could easily return it back within duration of 30 days after receiving it. This would give them back their money and also give them a big reason to trust the services of online shopping websites. This trend soon caught up with a lot of e-commerce websites and things started becoming even more interesting.

We are at this current phase today where online shopping has finally been accepted by a lot of customers in India. There have been a lot of interesting offers that were presented in a way that people would immediately go for it. The most important factor being, when someone had a great experience from such sites, they started indulging in word of mouth publicity. It is a very common phenomenon, when someone is happy with the service they would recommend it to many of their friends and family. This process thus goes on and builds a strong reputation for that website. These positive reviews help reach the website at a very good position. All this has happened in the duration of five years, which shows that the evolution was quick.

It would be quite literal if we considered the following statement that “The future of online shopping is a gift for everyone”. It is quite true and the time when the evolution was under process, the future was taking its own shape in the form of gifting websites which formed parallel to the other portals. This is one market that has newly taken its course banking on the popularity of people taking to online shopping. These websites offer you the opportunity to send gifts to your dedicated recipient anywhere in India. You have to provide the address of the person you intend to gift and the impeccable delivery services these sites provide will ensure the gift reaches on time. They also have the features like same day delivery or mid night delivery that lets you send presents on the exact time when someone has their birthday. This is quite a fact that the rise of the online gift shops is what is going to be the trend in the future as per the current scenario is concerned. A very recent website that started in 2014, named clickgiftstoindia.com happens to be one of the many website in this gifting market that promises to be distinct and has been performing quite well as of today.

Thus this brings us to the epic conclusion that the online shopping market in India is still open as the estimated market seems to be captured by only 10 to 12 % which means there is quite a long way to go. Another interesting thing to watch out would be the rise of the gifting industry which has already marked its arrival. The potential goes on to be huge for a lot of people involved in this business. This is definitely going to be a great thing for the customers as they get to choose from a great range of variety. Now it is a going to be an interesting thing to watch out what happens in the next five years.