Are Online Shopping Websites Having Negative Impact On The Retailers In India?

The latest fashion trend among the consumers in India is online shopping or e-shopping. Instead of hopping from shop to shop to buy their favorite products in the best possible rate, consumers have started hopping from site to site at the convenience of their home. When it comes to consumers, it is the best thing that could have happened to them. No need of taking out time to go shopping. There are no fixed timings. Consumers can shop as and when they need and the product is delivered to their home. No need of jostling through the crowd and standing in line to purchase your product. E-commerce sites have also entered the FMCG market in India, like Big Basket, where you can buy vegetable and groceries online.

Although online shopping has come as a boon for consumers in India, there is a flip side to it as far as the retailers are concerned. Now, not only do they need to compete with other retailers, they also need to compete with the e- commerce websites which has a definite edge over the retail store owners.

As per a recent study, the turnover of enterprises has gone down by around 80% over the past two to three years. This is a very disturbing trend and is also discouraging for the local retailers. The retailers have also agreed to the fact that their profit margin has gone down as they need to give more discounts in order to attract their customers. This has also resulted in people losing jobs.

The customer loyalty has drastically shifted towards e-commerce sites. The main factor being the variety offered by these e-commerce sites which local retailers cannot afford to have. E-commerce site have the luxury of showcasing various products from various brands as they do not need to physically store these products. On the other hand the retailer can only manage to have a certain amount of products from a few brands as they have limited space to store their products.

Times have changed and today's market is consumer's market. There has been an alarming increase in window shopping not turning into potential customers as the customers have the option of choice. They can either choose from the store or go online and get the product that they want to buy. In order to increase their sales the retailers have no other choice but to be on the good books of the consumers. The retailers have to change the way they offer their products and services to their customers in order to survive in the competitive market. Changes like attracting customers to their stores with larger variety, fair price, etc. need to be adopted by the retailers. They also need to avail the benefits of technology by introducing the online shopping concept to the extent possible to increase their sale. They can also change their window display from the conventional methods to more unconventional methods to draw the window shoppers to become potential customers.

Yes, e-commerce sites are posing challenges to retailers in a big way but if the retailers can be more adaptive and flexible in their approach then they can expect the tide changing in their favor in the longer run.