With opportunity comes responsibility, Winston Churchill once famously said, and India’s online sellers are getting ready with a similar mindset at the start of the festive season. Despite muted sales in 2023, the small online retailers are opening up their wallets to spend on marketing in order to boost their stagnant fortunes and do better than last year.
Redseer found that the marketing budgets of all sellers are likely to increase by 50% from business-as-usual (BAU) times. Smaller players might see their budgets rise by 75%.
The smaller sellers are willing to contribute more of their revenue to advertising compared to larger sellers. This is a result of the muted season for online sellers. Only 40% of online sellers saw over 10% revenue growth in 2017.
The festive period is expected to enable sellers, especially the smaller ones, to come out of the challenging sales environment experienced through this and sellers are optimistic of strong sales growth. Consequently, they intend to significantly increase their advertising spending on ecommerce platforms during this festive season,” says Mrigank Gutgutia, partner at Redseer Strategy Consultants.
Sellers expect at least a 15% increase in festive sales this year as compared to last year. The median sales growth for the sellers is slated at 26%.
By Redseer’s projections, e-tailing sales will rake in roughly 90,000 crore in gross merchandise value (GMV) this year. That’s 18-20% more than last year’s sales.
In an otherwise challenging macro-environment, sellers across categories, including those with lower average selling prices (ASPs) like fashion, are bullish about this growth trajectory.
Besides bullish expectations, online sellers are also now more confident about e-Commerce platforms. As many as 62% said that the platforms have been helpful for their holiday planning.
According to Redseer, sellers have shown strong support from platforms in terms of data analytics, trend predictions, and consumer visibility.
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