BENGALURU: Every fifth order that was placed on e-commerce portals during the festive season (October-November) was either cancelled or returned, finds a latest survey by Nielsen. The market researcher studied the shopping behaviour of nearly 1.6 lakh digital shoppers.
The rate of order cancellation stood higher this year at 20 per cent when compared to 17 per cent in 2019. According to the report, smaller towns with less than 10 lakh population and mostly first time shoppers, comprised the majority of the cancelled orders.
“The cancellation/return is a critical metric to track as it directly impacts the retailers GMVs since reverse logistics is an additional overhead to manage for retailers. While cancellations offer flexibility to consumers, they also lead to poor customer satisfaction if the returns experience is broken,” said Kunal Gupta, Head, Consumer Intelligence, Nielsen, South Asia. The e-commerce industry was estimated to clock sales worth $7 billion during the period.
The survey, which studied consumer behaviour across 30 e-commerce platforms, also found double-digit increase in average spend for electronics and accessories (39 per cent), mobile and accessories (12 per cent) and fashion, including apparel, footwear, and accessories (10 per cent). Appliances such as TV, washing machine, refrigerators, etc.) also saw shopper spending increase at 9 per cent.
In line with the global trend, consumers in India are fitting into the homebound behaviour, said Gupta. Shoppers have also moved beyond electronics and fashion to buy groceries online this year with fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) constituting 35 per cent share of the units sold.