E-commerce now facilitates sales in new shopping malls of India’s small towns

by Suman Gupta

MAPIC India conference concludes with capturing new trends in retail

Mumbai, September, 2019: Contrary to the perception about e-commerce being a disruption to physical brick and mortar retail, the reverse is now seen in India’s tier-II and III towns, according to a cross section of retailers at the concluding session of the two-day MAPIC India conference, formerly India Retail Forum on Wednesday.

E-commerce had already reached tier II and tier III including small towns with the product portfolio and now the customer wants to know the experience physically, that has aided the new malls in this space.

“In the large cities, it is modern retail that has introduced new products to consumers. But now thanks to omnichannel many more small towns have got introduced to new assortment and products and the benefit of that comes to the whole ecosystem to the larger retail landscape when you enter tier II and III towns.” said Devendra Chawla, MD & CEO, Spencer’s Retail, which recently acquired Nature’s Basket retail chain.

Malls in tier-II and III towns are also undergoing a shift as food is becoming main stay attracting foot falls and accounting for 60% expenditure while retail is 40%, said Samir Menon, Managing Director, Yum Restaurants.

As a result, malls in Tier-II and Tier III cities are already having food courts on the ground floor and the trend may get extended to metros in the near term.

Earlier, in the day, Anurag Mathur, Partner, PWC pointed out that consumer behaviour is increasingly shaped by the presence of new channels in their lives, that connects them to new brands.

According to consumer insights survey by PWC, 75% of consumers have 3 or more healthcare & wellness app on their smart device while 32% consumers are influenced to buy a product or service following a positive review on social media.

The survey indicated that fashion purchases were influenced the most by social media for 54% consumers while 31% say they buy products online weekly or more frequently.