In its recently concluded Great Indian Festival 2024, Amazon India witnessed a high demand for premium products that was not limited to just metro cities, Saurabh Srivastava, vice-president—categories, Amazon India, said on Saturday. “We saw it across cities,” he said in an interaction with FE.
As per data shared by the company, tier-2 and beyond cities contributed more than 70% of the premium smartphone sales on Amazon. The demand for large appliances from tier-2 cities grew by 25%, with customers preferring air conditioners and refrigerators. More than 50% of TV purchases came from tier-2 and -3.
Srivastava said there has been a shift in customer preference, with more interest towards costlier and bigger items. For instance, demand for large-screen TVs saw 10x growth this year. For premium tablets, mainly from Apple and Samsung, demand increased 10x and 5x, respectively.
The company said premium smartphones, priced over Rs 30,000, saw their highest y-o-y growth. In fashion and beauty, the premium portfolio saw a 400% rise in demand as compared to last year’s Diwali sale.
Srivastava said one of the main reasons for this was the improvement in customer trust towards e-commerce. “There is more trust that customers are getting from e-commerce for their large size purchases or more premium products,” he said. This, he said, was aided by simpler payment options like EMI, attractive exchange values and facilities like same-day installation. Customers availed installation and extended warranties across over 50 product types, the highest-ever service selection on Amazon.in.
It was visible in the spike in demand for certain categories like sanitaryware and sinks. There was a 500% growth in demand for sanitaryware and 300% in sinks. According to data shared by the company, Amazon Pay witnessed more than 25% growth in EMI and 45% growth in no-cost EMI transactions, respectively.
Moreover, the spike in demand was not limited to metro cities. This year, GIF 2024 witnessed 140 crore customer visits, its highest ever. Of these, more than 85% of customers were from non-metro cities. They also had a high demand for premium products.