Spire shares views of India’s ICT vendors’ and customers’ at the GATES ICT Summit 2016

Spire Research and Consulting was honored to participate in the GATES India ICT Reseller Summit 2016 as the content and research partner.

The event was held in Bangalore from 4-6 October, 2016. The Summit is an initiative to provide a powerful business platform for consumer electronics and ICT brands to launch, develop and expand their network in the Indian sub-continent.

Saurabh Sharma, Country Director for Spire Research and Consulting India, highlighted the findings of Spire’s survey to assess the experience of ICT customers and vendors for online and offline platforms in India. The survey focused on customers’ purchase habits, preferred price range and product preferences along with future mode of purchase. It also measured vendors’ selling habits, preferred price range and product preferences along with association with e-commerce platforms

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The data was drawn from telephonic and online surveys conducted (in October 2016) across five metropolitan cities, namely Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Kolkata.

The survey showed that 54% of online shoppers have made ICT purchases online. Bangalore based respondents made the most online ICT purchases (67%).

Mobile phones (90%) topped the list of most purchased items followed by mobile accessories (50%). Leading e-commerce platforms included Flipkart (82%) and Amazon (74%).

Big price discounts (73%) and convenience (62%) encouraged online purchases but 92% of respondents were open to buy offline if their preferred e-tailer launched a physical store. In contrast, offline purchases are encouraged by emotional satisfaction, room for price negotiation, product verification proof and better post-sales support. This is why online stores are generally favoured by customers’ of low priced ICT products.

64% of vendors have been associated with e-commerce platforms for less than 3 years, with 87% of those having a brick and mortar presence via physical stores or channel sales.

Vendors consider faster payments (53%) with hassle-free delivery (32%) as key decision factors when choosing e-commerce platform partners.

However, 97% of vendors view physical channels as being more profitable due to factors such as negligible returns, better cash flow, flexible product prices, low replacement and damage, to name a few.

Sharma’s presentation deck on “India’s ICT Sector – Vendors’ and Customers’ Perspective (E-commerce and Brick and Mortar stores) ” can be found here.

https://www.spireresearch.com/newsroom/events/httpswww-spireresearch-comwp-contentuploads201611event-coverage_spire-shares-views-of-indias-ict-vendors-and-customers-at-the-gates-ict-summit-2016-pdf/