ByIANSlife Features

October 27, 2019 (IANSlife) So you believe you’re the only one who wants to stay off the roads this Diwali, think again; 48 per cent of consumers say they prefer online shopping over traditional brick and mortar shops. This is revealed by a study done by Germin8, a social digital intelligence firm. Better prices are one of the major reasons why online shopping is a winner. Twenty-one per cent are quite blunt in pointing out that the inconveniences linked to traffic jams, heavy crowds, and the physical effort pushes them to choose the online shopping.

The study further shows that  11  per cent feel that statements such as "people are not spending as much as they used to on festival season" being made by the shopkeepers is a traditional alibi used to promote footfall in their stores and has nothing to do with the actual consumer buying habits.

There is a rise in what consumers often call “sensible shopping”  as 10 per cent suggest that the “consumer culture” is losing its hold and the buyers are more educated and spending wisely. Some other reasons suggesting a drop in the buyer spending include a fear of an economic slowdown ( 13 per cent) among consumers and the belief that there has been a reduced flow of black money in the market. Here are the numbers:

Advertising spends on social media: 
1) Apparel leads with 39 per cent.
2) E-commerce share on social media content  is at 26 per cent and out of this 64 per cent  are images for Diwali.

Custom festival hashtags :

1) Mostly all brands went ahead and created their own custom festival Hashtags for the season.
2) Only 38 per cent of the posts which contained hashtags used generic ones such as “Diwali” and “HappyDiwali”.

Division of the content :
1) 38 per cent were promotion posts. 
2) Greetings counted for 26 per cent of the posts.
3) Offer’s accounted for 19 per cent of the social media content.  
4) Contests trailed  in at 7 per cent. 

Posts which had the highest engagement per post:
●    Video Greetings and Image posts put up by the brands for offers and contests gathered significant engagement.
●    While mostly all brands invested in promotion, greetings and offers posts, apparel and e-commerce brands invested mostly on  the contest posts on social media.
●    It is interesting to note that rather than commenting to apparel, e-commerce, food or automotive brands, users tend to communicate more with posts put up by the Banks and Financial services. They use the posts as a venue to raise complaints and concerns as they feel the brand will lend them more attention.

Dr Ranjit Nair (PhD, AI), CEO and Founder of Germin8 Solutions, stated: “We, at Germin8, use Germin8 Social Listening which helps us understand the current public interest and sentiment on various trending topics happening in India. Germin8 collects conversations from across all social media platforms and using AI analyses these conversations in real time and converts them into industry-specific actionable insights. 
From the social media analysis that we have undertaken this year, it is clear that online shopping is gripping a strong hold within the consumer community and thus it would be apt for brands to invest in advertising via social media content to boost themselves in the consumer’s eyes during the festival season.”

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Editing by Deepika Bhan and N. Lothungbeni Humtsoe