'Hybrid' shopping in India to grow 1.3X during festival season

Customers are expected to predominantly do “hybrid shopping” this festive season, which means that they will buy across multiple channels to make sure they can find the products they want. A new study shows that 52% of Indians are purchasing products online via apps and 44% are buying online after browsing in-store. 

This hybrid shopping model is predicted to grow 1.3x over the festive season of 2022, said the study released by InMobi, a provider of content, monetization, and marketing technologies that help businesses fuel growth, in partnership with Branch, a mobile linking and measurement company. 

The report titled, ‘An App Marketer’s Guide to the Indian Festive Shopper 2022’ also showed that fintech apps have witnessed over a 100% increase in app installs and approximately 80% in engagement due to the convenience of making purchases. Additionally, real-money gaming apps have seen a 60% increase in engagement.  

Furthermore, travel apps have seen a 60% increase in installs, as per the study that covered data from 330 million smartphone users across 44,000 apps, and 4.1 billion app installs and 5.2 billion deep links in the period from September 2020 to December 2021. 

Rishi Bedi managing director, Asia Pacific at InMobi stated, “When it comes to today’s consumer making a purchase, the convenience aspect of the shopping journey is now digitally enhanced, with research, decision-making, and purchase. Post pandemic, most shoppers have shifted to shopping on a hybrid model.” 

Notably, paid media is driving a significant volume of installs within India, with 31.2% belonging to social, 29.8% in affiliate and publisher networks and 39% in search. However, as inflationary pressures hit global markets in 2022, marketers must experiment with their marketing mix to ascertain the impact of paid, direct, and organic channels on attribution, said the study. 

 “With Indians looking to travel, shop and meet up with friends and families this year, their interaction with mobile apps will change. Marketers will need to focus on how to drive more engagement with their new and existing users in 2022, going beyond app acquisition efforts only,” Sahil Singh, Head of Sales - APAC from Branch said. 

According to a report released last month by Criteo’s insights, the overall increase in online sales this festive season showed a 30% increase compared to a 19% increase during the 2021 sales event. In fact, on the first day of the sales event this year, online sales increased by 28% compared to 2021. 

A Nielsen’s Bharat 2.0 internet study released in May this year talks about the massive increase in Indian internet users which has been powered by mobile phones in the country, primarily driven by the availability of budget smartphones, affordable mobile data and the Indian government’s efforts to strengthen the existing digital infrastructure. India is the third largest smartphone market in the world today, with about 250 million active users. 

Indians are spending more time on mobile every day than most other countries, taking it up to the top five spot globally (behind Brazil, Indonesia, South Korea, Mexico), with more than 4.7 hours being spent per day on mobile apps in 2021, up 27% from 2019, it said.