The Future of Online Shopping in India

The retail industry in India has seen revolutionary changes in the last few years. From going to brick-and-mortar stores, people found themselves drawn to e-commerce, since it helped them keep up with their fast-paced lives. However, that soon changed after people realized that they couldn’t engage with the product they wanted as much as they would like to and shifted their focus back to the physical aspect of shopping.

Everything was going well – it was a good balance of brick-and-mortar stores and online shopping until 2020. The onset of the pandemic brought everything to a standstill – from local stores to malls, all of them shut their doors. People around the world had to depend heavily upon online shopping once again. Since the lockdown drastically affected the economy, the country was in dire need of a radical idea that could help it rise up from the ashes.

The retail industry is synonymous with experimentation and experiment it did. The concept of ‘Live Online Shopping’ was born in China – one that would help people communicate and engage with their desired items the way they do while shopping physically. This novel concept began as an experiment but soon became a dominant source of revenue in China. Online video shopping made so much noise that soon, the world began to take notice.

Now, the Indian retail market is greatly divided between the unorganized sector and the organized retail sector. The organized sector includes all organized brick & mortar stores and online shopping sites. Despite the boom in B2C e-commerce sector, a majority of Indians continue to have more faith in the neighbourhood brick-and-mortar stores for shopping as they prefer touching and feeling the products and negotiating over-the-counter discounts, before buying.

In India, a great majority of B2C e-commerce retailers draw customers to shop online by offering bargains such as free delivery, discounts, buy-one-get-one-free offers and exchange offers. However, many Indian shoppers are known to be cost-conscious and conservative as a part of their value system, and are generally not very impulsive when it comes to decisions based on promotions and advertisements.

Therefore, experts predict that the future of live online shopping in India is strong. At this point, the concept of online video shopping is still at the teething stage, but it won’t be long before it makes a big splash in the market scene.

With the concept of live online shopping in the fray, many smartphone apps have jumped at the opportunity to bring it to the Indian consumer base. Proxgy is one such app which provides customers with easy access to online video shopping in its own unique way. All people have to do is login to the app and book a Proxgy. The Proxgy will be the customer’s own virtual avatar that will do the shopping on their behalf, as the customer guides him in real time. Not just that, customers will also be able to communicate with their Proxgies in real time while they buy the product. Furthermore, once the purchase is made, customers can get it delivered to their doorstep or even have the store keep it safely for them to pick it up later.

Live video shopping is a powerful way for brands and retailers to establish and reinforce their relationships with customers. It gives them a way to showcase their brand persona and truly interact with their customers, especially in times where physical retail experience is a challenge and customer shopping habits are changing. The technology opens up a wealth of opportunities in marketing, customer service and even revenue.

The soaring popularity of live streaming may be an outcome of the intimacy it creates between shoppers and retailers. It adds the necessary ‘human touch’ to online sales. While ‘digital’ is people’s first experience of the world, selling platforms that foster connections strike a chord with buyers. Moreover, there is a trust factor associated with it as live online shopping hosts act as an added layer of protection to guarantee bona fide products for consumers.