The shopper’s behavior has evolved, with marketplaces enhancing the shopping experience with augmented reality and a flurry of mega-sale seasons. The digital shelf in Indian e-commerce landscape has witnessed some rapid changes in recent years.
During the festive season in 2023, brands promoted their product with extensive sponsored activity and launched new products aggressively as it was coupled with mega events for advertising the Cricket World Cup in India 2023. But 2024 is witnessing an unprecedented rise, as Indian ecommerce market to grow to $325 billion and digital economy to reach $800 billion by 2030.
What’s next in the eCommerce arena? With an expanding internet user base coupled with rising purchase power and convenience driven by Quick commerce platforms. The future of e-commerce in India is bright, as we are poised to become a worldwide e-commerce powerhouse by 2030 with 500 million online shoppers. Brands also need to up their digital shelf game to match the pace of the competitive digital commerce landscape.
Let’s dive deep into what this will lead to and what to expect in 2025 and beyond.
eCommerce Trends for 2024
Rise of Value-First Shoppers
The shopper’s behavior is getting complex and challenging to predict day by that with multiple choices, platforms, and steep competition. Online shoppers buy different products at different prices for various reasons. Understanding their motivation and need is key to excel in 2024 & beyond.
Among the most common types of shoppers are impulse buyers, casual shoppers, need-based, research-oriented, and those who follow the trends, value-first shoppers have carved their niche looking for products that offer value for money and are on par with their lifestyle needs.
Brands need to tap the buying potential of such shoppers and use insights competition to become the top pick of these shoppers. Health & Wellness, Beauty & Personal Care categories are key target segments. The digital native brands (DNB) catering to such niche of shoppers also need to track competition strategies on e-commerce and quick commerce platforms.
Expansion Across Tier 2, 3 Cities & Beyond
Brands need to understand the landscape of online shopping has moved beyond tier-1 cities with more influx of shoppers coming from tier-2 & 3 cities. The ease of payment and high-speed internet penetration across tier-2 cities and beyond has led to rise of mobile commerce and social commerce as platforms like Meesho earned 60% of its sale during festive season sale from tier-2 cities.
The 2024 is the year of expansion and discovery where tier-2 & 3 cities experience rise in presence of quick commerce -dark store for swift delivery. Even Amazon is witnessing an influx of shoppers into the prime ecosystem from tier 2 and 3 consumers discovering new categories.
Digital infrastructure has advanced, significant shift is observed towards tier 2-4 towns, with over 60% of demand expected to be driven by rural India by 2026. In 2024 during the prime day sale, the e-commerce retailers saw 65 percent of the growth coming from tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Brands need to identify opportunities in these geographies and explore new opportunities. Identify gaps in the market presence at pin-code level.
Personalized Experience with Global Localization
The world is shrinking in terms of reach and information access. Shoppers are aware of what’s going on in the global market and what is in trend but personalized experience and connect with products is still a key point in making purchase decision. Brands selling in global e-commerce ecosystem across multiple countries must be in-tune with needs of the local market and competition activities as one marketing experience not necessarily works on other marketplaces.
The availability mobile-first content in the local languages has led to a surge, with approx. 73% of India’s internet users using Indian languages for online shopping. This has opened the Indian e-commerce landscape to regional language base of 540 million, offering a market size of $53 billion.
Brands need to provide personalized experience and keep track of what’s trending on in the marketplace in their categories to extend their market share.
More Convenience with Quick Commerce
The quick Commerce platforms have led to a new era of online sales with convenience and fulfilling last minute needs. India’s quick commerce market is expected to reach a market size of $5.5 billion by 2025.
Brands in Food & beverage category are approaching the platforms more aggressively as its dominating over in-store sales which cost hefty margins. The key challenge for platforms and brands on quick commerce in 2024 is optimizing performance and expanding across geographies along with monitoring needs of shoppers at granular level within cities.
The rate at which quick commerce platforms are expanding product categories and number of SKUs the signs are looking more positive with rise in order volume and cart value. The new trends of quick sale and product launches have been witnessed recently like Unicorn Info Solutions (Apple reseller) partnering with Blinkit to deliver the latest-generation iPhone models in minutes.
Rise of D2C Commerce
The D2C Commerce has been a breath of fresh air in 2023-2024 as more investment comping in the wide variety of D2C players in e-commerce 2024 is looking bright. Digital Native Brands expanding horizon beyond their e-commerce websites and venturing into the e-commerce marketplaces and quick commerce arena. With the extension of reach and new sales platforms D2C ecosystem is all set to achieve new milestones in coming years especially in Beauty & personal care, Fashion and Health & Wellness product categories.
D2C brands do not need extensive inventory tracking but need to be aware of the competition in traditional e-commerce and in niche categories. Digital commerce intelligence for them is more about identifying the gaps in the market and building data-driven strategies.
New Avenues are opening and expanding like social commerce. Social Commerce landscape is about to expand market size of $ 70 billion by 2030, with rise in influencer marketing in D2C space and gaining wide appeal.
E-commerce Intelligence for Competitive Monitoring
Data driven growth is the mantra for 2024 and beyond. To stay on top of the digital shelf build business intelligence that drives data-driven decisions with competitive analytics and real-time actionable insights can give brand much need edge in highly competitive e-commerce landscape.
The e-commerce intelligence helps brands boost their product discoverability, keyword share and monitor stock availability in real-time versus competition. The product page content can be optimized to extend brands share of search with adherence to different guidelines across e-commerce & quick commerce platforms. Rating & Reviews tracking helps brands identify what is working for them and what’s not by keeping track of what people are talking about and working on it to enhance customer experience. Data -driven e-commerce business decisions are going to set the tone for the future of brands in the upcoming rat-race of brands in the digital commerce ecosystem.
What Brands should do to keep up with the emerging e-commerce trends of 2024 trends and beyond?
The brands need to be well aware of rapidly evolving shopping behavior and trends across platforms and geographies. The customer preference for tier-2 cities is quite in contrast to the tier-1 cities. Brands need to map what’s their preference is and identify the geographies and platforms where their products are preferred and where competition is leading the race. As Quick Commerce platforms are expanding it reaches with swift delivery and fulfillment of daily needs brands need to track products and optimize performance across e-commerce, quick commerce platforms along with their D2C platforms. The multichannel selling needs constant monitoring on core KPIs like pricing, availability, keyword share, product page content, and rating & reviews.
Brands need to check on key issues like:
- Ads monitoring & optimizing performance
- Monitor keyword share & bid for right keywords
- Track product performance across platforms & geographies
- Build competitive intelligence to identify new opportunities
- Keep Pace with market trends across marketplaces
Final Thoughts
The new dynamic world of e-commerce needs a dynamic solution to monitor activities across platforms brands need extensive monitoring and automation of processes rather than deploying teams for monitoring purposes. It doesn’t matter if you’re a big conglomerate selling across multiple countries and platforms or a D2C brand selling through their website. Every brand needs competitive intelligence and actionable insights to keep up with trends in 2024 and beyond. Be it optimizing your ad spends or optimizing performance on e-commerce performance mFilterIt helps you navigate the complexities of the digital ecosystem. With mScanIt, Digital commerce Intelligence brands can build business intelligence to edge ahead of the competition across global e-commerce platforms and geographies. The key to the future is data and data-driven intelligence that can guide businesses to make decisions that are in tune with shoppers and brand needs in the fast-paced digital commerce landscape.
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