In the great Indian festive sale season, mobile phones continue to reign, but fashion is also becoming increasingly popular. What’s interesting to note is that in both the categories, there’s a strong spike in the sale of premium products, reflecting the taste of high life that Indian shoppers have acquired in recent times.
In the ongoing Amazon Great Indian Festival 2023, for instance, the e-commerce platform’s ‘Prime’ members purchased more than 75 smartphones per second in the first hour of sale during the Prime Early Access phase. “Four out of every five smartphones sold in the first 48 hours were 5G-ready. Premium smartphones (priced over Rs 30,000), witnessed 3x growth compared to last year, driven by easy affordability options such as no-cost EMI and attractive exchange offers,” said Ranjit Babu, director, smartphones and televisions, Amazon India.
The festival, which started on October 8, is offering a wide selection of 5G smartphones, right from entry-level to value-enhanced models. Premium smartphones are being preferred for their advanced features such as high-end processors, fast-charging batteries, AMOLED displays, etc.
While tablets are seeing a 2x spike in demand, laptops are also witnessing more than 40% increase as compared to last year.
The most preferred smartphone brands have turned out to be OnePlus, Samsung and Apple, as per Babu. “Customers purchased more than 100 OnePlus smartphones every minute in the first 48 hours of the sale (2.5x more than 2022). Samsung drove premium phone demand with their flagship Galaxy S Series growing 3x over last year,” he added.
E-com company Flipkart, too, saw high traction for premiumisation in categories like electronics and mobile phones. The premium smartphone segment grew 1.7x over last year’s The Big Billion Days (TBBD) sale. This year, the sale was held from October 8 to 15.
According to Counterpoint Research, over 1.5 million units of iPhones were sold in the first week of the festive season sales that started from October 8, powering an overall market growth of 25% year-on-year (y-o-y) in value terms,. The growth in iPhone sales was across models including iPhone 14, iPhone 13 and iPhone 12. Other brands like Samsung and Xiaomi also contributed to the growth during the first week, both in terms of value and volume.
The reason for the sales in smartphones across segments is due to heavy price discounts, higher trade-in values, and attractive bundling offers. Premium segment sales almost doubled across online channels from October 8 to October 15, Counterpoint Research said. On Flipkart, the premium segment growth was almost 50% y-o-y driven by iPhone 14 and Samsung Galaxy S21 FE. On Amazon, the segment growth was almost 200% y-o-y driven by iPhone 13 and Galaxy S23 FE.
Meanwhile, in fashion, products in the Rs 5,000+ range witnessed an 8x growth across footwear, watches and accessories compared to the pre-festive period for Flipkart. Tier-2 regions witnessed a growing preference for branded clothing with the premium portfolio across makeup, fragrance, toys and babycare witnessing a 4x growth compared to the pre-festive period.
At Amazon, more than half of all sales on Amazon fashion were from tier-2/3 cities and towns for premium brands. It also saw 2x growth in fashion jewellery, 3.5x in beauty essentials, 10x in sarees under Rs 199, 6x in polo T-shirts under Rs 299 and 6x growth in sports shoes.
Saurabh Srivastava, vice-president of Amazon Fashion India, said, “While the electronics category sees a lot of spike during this period, so does fashion and beauty, as people buy new clothes, jewellery and such items.”
For Flipkart, new on-app experiences such as Flippi (a Chat GPT-powered shopping assistant), Vibes (video-led browsing experience) and SPOYL (Gen-Z fashion experience) saw a 4x increase in engagement, compared to the pre-festive period.
Meanwhile, the festive season sales by ecommerce platforms clocked a gross merchandise value (GMV) of Rs 47,000 crore, growing at 19% over week 1 of the 2022 festive season sale, a recent report by Redseer Consultants said. High average selling price (asp) items such as mobiles, electronics and large appliances emerged as the largest contributor to the sales driving over 67% of the total sales with premiumisation emerging as a key theme in these categories.