Sounding Board. Why do you shop online?

Online stores have been going to town this festive season, offering mind-boggling discounts and fighting tooth and nail for a share of the consumer wallet.

These e-commerce sites have certainly gathered a strong following in recent times.

With Indians now shopping on the Net for almost everything — from fancy gizmos to toothbrushes — how much of the festival shopping has moved away from traditional retail? What are consumers’ online shopping habits? We spoke to a few consumers to find out.

Take Ludhiana-based Nalin Rai, who does virtually all his shopping online. His first tryst with the online channel was over eight years ago, when he picked up an air-conditioner and washing machine from the HyperCITY website. “I got a sweet deal that instilled confidence in the new evolving platform of shopping,” he declares.

As for the numbers this channel attracts, especially during the shopping-mad festive season, “One need not bother about driving along jam-packed roads or keeping an eye out for elusive parking spaces. I don’t have to contend with salesmen pushing particular brands down my throat, just to meet targets. I save on fuel costs too!” explains Rai. And, along with the comfort of shopping from his armchair, there’s the equal ease in returning products, no questions asked.

On the battle raging between Web-based and brick-and-mortar retailers, Rai feels that the online world has genuinely empowered customers. The offline world has for long been fleecing customers, he says. And a huge advantage of moving purchases online is that it has dispersed with location restrictions. “If one had to do some good or branded shopping, they had to go to big cities such as Delhi or Mumbai. Now, there is no need to go anywhere, and one can enjoy best of products at his or her home. It has really democratised shopping and tilted the scale in favour of the customers,” Rai says.

For Sweatha Nair too, the easy access and circumventing aggressive traffic and insistent sales-talk is a huge positive. “It’s much easier to window-shop when you don’t have salespersons breathing down your neck,” she says. The online route is the one she takes for purchases such as apparel, kitchenware and other knick-knacks. But she has plenty to rant about sites that take booked deals, as she had experienced with Snapdeal. With Diwali offers flying thick and fast, she made several purchases which were later cancelled, though she did receive all her money back.

That is one area where online stores can improve, feels Sweatha — living up to their promise on product deals. Other improvements can be in the form of enhanced product descriptions as well as better handling of customer grievances and feedback.

For Chennai-based Suresh Kumar, who has penned two books, Cracked Pots and The Cubicle , books are what he usually shops for online. But this festival season, about 80 per cent of his shopping has been via websites. There were a lot of good deals available! In fact, he says, “I stopped buying anything for about a month, in anticipation of such deals.” Besides the clear price advantage, he lists the ease of shopping with collection of products displayed at one go, product reviews of previous buyers, and preferential delivery rates as other plus points for online stores.

“I think shopping websites have built trust for themselves. And through that trust, they have built trust for manufacturers as well. That has significantly reduced the gap between the end consumer and manufacturers,” declares Suresh. As long as there is transparency over deal pricing — unlike the trust Flipkart lost recently — he has no qualms over online purchases.

The good deals on pricing are also what draw Chandru Covindane, a software professional in Bangalore, to the online world, where branded goods are often far cheaper. “You tend to curse yourself if you buy a product from a traditional retailer for, say, ₹1,000 and your friend snagged it at ₹750 from an online retailer. It doesn’t help that your friend will brag about it for some time,” he says.

Of course, he muses, this throws open the question of what the actual product prices are, and how these can be sold at the stiff discounts online retailers are wont to offer. “It’s not that all products should be forcibly sold at uniform prices. Even a buy-one-get-one-free is a form of discount. By such reductions, who exactly is paying the price? Customers are certainly benefited. But is the online retailer taking on the discount or the manufacturer? Are the stores even profitable? Or then, is the MRP itself flawed?”

What Chandru would not buy online is clothing, citing a lack of uniformity in sizes across companies. What is a size M or S or even a shirt size 40 in one brand is often quite something else with another. These need to be standardised first. Buying vegetables online too is dicey for him. While there are sites such as bigbasket.com, he would rather check in with those using such services before attempting vegetable purchases online. This might change, however, with better word-of-mouth and customer reviews.

Online grocery shopping is a no-no with Bangalore finance professional Jaison George too. “I would not buy daily consumables online as these are very easily available in the neighbourhood and are price sensitive as well. Further, a good number of things bought from a grocery store are impulse purchases.”

His shopping through websites is usually for products that need a bit of research such as electronics and home appliances or branded products that don’t require research and are price-critical. Clothes, sweets and such need to be felt and seen (or tasted!) before buying, and so are best done through brick-and-mortar stores.

It is this touch-and-feel aspect that is the most difficult to get around, feels Chennai-based Priya Payakkal who runs Vasah, an online jewellery store. “It’s hard to convince people who need to hold products to come online. To sustain in the industry, references and word of mouth are very important.” She finds the convenience of online shopping and the time saved a blessing, especially with a rambunctious toddler at home.