Consumer Internet Usage

In my previous post I talked about the general etailing market and the market size. In this post, I would zero in on the factors which triggered ecommerce in India.

Internet Penetration played a cardinal role in pushing the ecommerce story of India.Internet usage in India has shown a healthy growth in the last few years. More importantly, it is showing clear signs of evolving and becoming the ‘dominant medium’ of interacting with the world for a good proportion of the regular online Indians. However, online buying has not really picked up as expected, making internet more of a ‘window shop’ rather than an ‘online market’ in any true sense of the word (except for the travel products). The fact that the bulk of Indian consumer mass comes from the vernacular Indian world, the increasing usage of local language websites is one of the most important elements of internet usage to watch out for in the future. Availability of relevant and meaningful local language content and applications on the net, together with affordable access, may become the biggest enabler (or the biggest limiting factor) in the future growth of Internet usage in India.

Consumer Internet Usage

Seasonality

Internet usage in general and eTailing Market in particular face seasonal fluctuations. During the peak season, occasions that drive the sales are Diwali, Rakhi, Valentine Day, New Year, Christmas, Mother’s Day, and Friendship Day. On these occasions younger generations prefers buying and sending gifts online.

Access Points

Internet is accessed the most from ‘place of work’, though ‘home’ emerges as the most preferred place of access.

1. Almost half of the regular internet users (46%) access the net from more than one place of access. The per capita ‘places of access’ averages at 1.7. On multiple access basis, place of work (office, school, colleges, etc.) still continues to be the single largest place for accessing internet at 60%.

2. Usage from home follows at 55%, and then from cyber cafes at 47%.

3. In terms of exclusive usage, while 1 in 5 internet users still accesses internet only from home (at 21%), another 1 in 5 also accesses it only from place of work (at 20%).

4. About 1 in 8 regular internet users (13%) accesses the net exclusively from a cyber café.

This still indicates that the relevance of cyber cafés is only ‘secondary’ in nature as of now. This low exclusive access of internet from cyber cafes could be one of the biggest barriers in the rapid growth of internet usage in India, as in a country like India the large-scale (mass) accessibility and affordability of computer at self-ownership level may still be a long way away.