Snapdeal Consumer buying Trends 2016

Snapdeal, India’s largest online marketplace, today announced its annual digital buying trends highlighting the consumer preferences and habits recorded on its platform for the year 2016.

As India leaped into a digital lifestyle, the sales recorded on Snapdeal for the year 2016 revealed that Delhi-NCR topped the charts as the most online shopping-savvy metro city in India, followed by Bangalore and Mumbai. Pune emerged as a leader amongst all Tier I city shoppers. Demand continued to be robust from across India – nearly 60% of the sales came from Tier II cities and beyond. Metros and Tier I cities accounted for 40% of the sales during the year. Mirroring the rising penetration of smartphones, 82% of the traffic came from the mobile platforms (app and m-site).

Commenting on the trends, Vishal Chadha, Senior Vice President (Business) Snapdeal, said, “2016 was an important growth year for the Indian online shopper - be it in terms of new customer segments adopting online commerce or increased acceptance of digital transaction methods. The delivery of functional benefits like speed, convenience and value also resulted in massive growth from non-metros cities in India. We are rapidly expanding our assortment in line with the needs and expectations of our existing users and also to cater to the next 100 million online shoppers from across India.”

Snapdeal offers the widest range of products across 1000+ categories fulfilling all kind of consumers’ needs. As consumers increasingly opted for the convenience that e-commerce offers, 2016witnessed a surge in growth across new categories including Daily Needs (Detergents and Fabric Care, Tea Coffee and Beverages); Living Room Furniture, Gaming, Academic and Professional Books, Mobile Enhancements and Gift Cards. 

Interestingly, Personal Care & Grooming stood out as a popular category among men, witnessing a 58% increase mostly in metro regions. Amongst women, make-up category is extremely popular online, seeing a whopping overall growth of 345% YoY. Women from the North region bought 32% of Make-up and Delhi became the highest contributor accounting for 12% of sales. In 2016, the sale of Skin Care category grew by 77% with Kolkata contributing 125% to the sales followed by Bangalore.  

From an overall perspective, popular categories included Mobiles & Tablets, Women’s Ethnic Wear, Men’s Apparel, Computer & Peripherals and Mobile Accessories.