Online vs Offline sales: More than 80 per cent of retailers part of a survey of around 3,000 retailers and shoppers released by MSME-focused digital lender NeoGrowth on Wednesday said that they don’t see e-commerce as a threat to their business. The study Click & Mortar: The Evolution of India’s Retail Ecosystem, which included respondents from auto, healthcare, infrastructure, services, FMCG & retail, consumer durables, food and beverage, fashion and lifestyle, and other sectors, noted that only 18 per cent of retailers claimed that their sales have declined due to the online selling platforms.
Among the least impacted sectors by e-commerce were consumer durable & electronics, food & beverage and fashion and lifestyle. The study also noted that 90 per cent of retailers make more than half of their sales offline while seven in 10 retailers plan to increase their physical presence ahead.
To keep up with the competition, about 43 per cent of retailers part of the survey offered discounts and combo offers while 34 per cent provided free and faster doorstep delivery.
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The request for home delivery was highest among customers ordering food & beverage (73 per cent), healthcare products (68 per cent), fashion & lifestyle products (63 per cent), and FMCG & retail products (55 per cent).
Recently, the traders’ representative body Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) had filed a petition to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to appeal for the earliest roll-out of e-commerce policy to protect traders from the alleged rampant violation of conditions of Press Note 2 of the FDI policy by the e-commerce companies.
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CAIT had on multiple occasions alleged that several foreign-funded e-commerce companies practice predatory pricing, deep discounting, loss funding, and owning inventory; and use a preferential seller system in their operations, causing unfair practices that add to the vulnerability of Indian e-commerce companies.