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| A Big Role Played by Online Shopping Practices - A Digital Strike on the Netizen's Marketing Habits of Assam : A Study. | |||||||
| Paper Id :
16247 Submission Date :
2022-07-12 Acceptance Date :
2022-07-22 Publication Date :
2022-07-25
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| Abstract |
The concept of dynamic market parameter made the end users to upgrade their infrastructure to cope with the market parameters. COVID-19 Pandemic has given a good lesson to all netizens of the Globe to upgrade their skill to work from their home which happens to be an unprecedent event and untapped resources which are being tapped from their home itself. The people of the North-Eastern Region (NER) are no exception to it but the speciality of the netizens of this part of the nation is that they are well acquainted and habitually performing their shopping from their home since long. Perhaps that could be the reasons for which about one fifth of online shopping, in certain domain, is coming from the NER only and Assam is no exception to it and the credit of the major stake holding goes to the netizens of Assam. Keeping in mind this background, the author has made an academic exercise to know the ground reality, based on certain secondary databased survey.
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| Keywords | Dynamic Market Parameters, COVID-19 Pandemic, Online Shopping. | ||||||
| Introduction |
In conventional way of doing commerce, interaction between businesses and consumers took place inside an actual physical building and only able to reach potential consumers within a specified limited geographical area and consumer usually drive around from store to store to track down a particular product. Traditional commerce operates at business hours and has no sharing of information about the products. Digital commerce is breaking all these boundaries. The main benefit of commerce with internet is connectivity. The uses of digital commerce are more convenient and cost effective. In an increasingly competitive and globalised world, to stay in contention and thrive in the business world, it is very important to break through the conventional rules and adopt commerce with information technology. With computer and communication technologies everything is digital, and the conduct of commerce may become better (like high quality, improved manageability, broader scope with greater scale), faster and cheaper. Due to increased popularity, utility and availability of high-speed internet, traditional businesses are considering digital commerce as a valid channel. As a result, several economic activities have begun to move to the digital to inculcate the concept of the ease of doing business in digital India.
Digital Commerce involves conducting business using modern communication instruments: smart phone, fax, e-payment, money transfer systems, e-data interchange, the Internet. Online businesses like financial services, travel, entertainment, groceries etc. are all likely to grow with digital commerce. Digital Commerce is a modern technology for business and in today most of the business adopting E-Commerce and expanding their business worldwide. It also includes the entire online process of developing, marketing, selling, delivering, servicing, and paying for products and services online. Connect business with the digital- Commerce is not so difficult just we need internet connection in a computer. In Assam there are growing number of various kinds of small and medium industries and businesses. Expansion of market of these industries is very important for the economic development of rural population of Assam and it is possible only with help of digital commerce. But only some growing numbers of entrepreneurs in Assam are adopting this technique. The trend has become apparent in the past couple of years, with online portals becoming an important medium for people to buy and sell items such as traditional paintings, jewellery, home décor, fabrics including T- shirts with fancy prints and even regional language books and electronics etc. This trend has taken a new shape during ongoing covid19 pandemic days. This is a sudden shift of business from offline to online.
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| Objective of study | The present research work aimed at the following objectives:
(i) To study the historical and the ongoing retail marketing scenario of the NER especially the state ofAssam.
(ii) To infer some constructive inferences to boost up the economic stake holding of online shopping of this region. |
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| Review of Literature | While
conducting the research work the researcher has come across a few literature on
the same field. Some of those have highlighted them as follows: Avgerou,
(2002) defined ecommerce as the purchase and sale of information, products,
and services using any one of the thousands of computer networks that make
up the internet. The term ecommerce encompasses a wide variety of activities
over the internet involving the exchange of information and data or
value-based exchanges between two or more parties spanning
across businesses (B2B), consumers (B2B, B2C, C2C) and governments
(G2B, G2C) (Vladimir Zwass, 1996). The digital commerce market in India is expected a higher growth on the back of better internet penetration, increase in trust level and pricing advantage. As per "India Goes Digital "a report by Avendus Capital, a leading Indian Investment Bank specializing in digital media and technology sector, the Indian e-commerce market is estimated at Rs 28,500 Crore for the year 2011. Online travel constitutes a sizable portion (87%) of this market today. Online travel market in India is expected to grow at a rate of 22% over the next 4 years and reach Rs 54,800 Crore in size by 2015. Indian e-tailing industry is estimated at Rs 3,600 crore in 2011 and estimated to grow to Rs 53,000 Crore in 2015.” The
e-commerce sector in India is predicted to grow at a 27% CAGR over 2019-24 and
is expected to reach 99 billion dollar by 2024, according to to a report
released by EY-IVCA Trend Book 2021. Grocery and fashion/apparel are said
to be the key drivers of this growth. The report further reveals that
India will have 220 million online shopping by 2025. The penetration of retail
is expected to be to be 107% by 2024 compared to 4.7% in 2019. The Govt of
India is aiming to build a trillion dollar online economy by 2025 through
its digital India program. (Economic Times, March19, 2021). AT
Kearney and Google launched a report titled "Creating the next multi-
billion dollar online opportunities in telecoms". The report only
bolsters the belief that in the future Internet will change our lives.
Countries like Japan and Korea, which are the leaders in online adoption, took
a decade to get where they are today, but in India experts say the race to
the top will be much faster. India has about 80 million smartphones, and
the number is expected to grow five times by 2017. It is just
the beginning of an era-the digital era, where India has till now been a
laggard. But in the years to come it will show the world the way forward
and will have more Internet users than the US. E-business
will have a growing impact on the macro economy. B2B and B2C transactions
will continue to expand into existing and future industries. The growth in
e-business will further increase productivity, reduce cost, and enhance
competition. Consequently, e business will continue to stimulate aggregate
economic activity. (Daniel, Heil & James E,
Prieger. [May19,2009] E-commerce
has a very strong impact on socio-economy of BTAD area by providing
new opportunities of Small-scale industries are amongst the last ones to
benefit from the new technology and are happily excited about the widened
opportunities increased through internet and E-commerce. ( Nath Prasenjit
,[ April 2013,page228] E-Commerce: Socio-Economy Impact, the Echo An
Online Journal of Humanities & Social Science, Volume- I, Issue-IV. |
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| Main Text |
Keeping parity with the rest of the nations of the world and the
Covid 19 pandemic scenario, India has taken it as a challenge to compete with
the economic turmoil and as such several economic policy decisions have been
adopted to sustain. The present economic scenario of the nation reveals that it
has successfully beaten the negative energy that flew from the pandemic
scenario. Economic migration to digital India concept has successfully boosted
up nation’s economic activities right from “Work from Home” concept to “Work
from the floor of the Industry.” Assam is no exception in these economic
activities. Following its inherent geological natural characteristics netizens
of this region were habitually dependent on digital based economic activities
and the Covid 19 pandemic has boosted it up to a new high scale. Keeping in
mind such economic profile, the author has made an attempt to perform an
academic exercise to unearth on to see the ground reality. This paper is the
outcome of the same. Keeping in mind this concept an attempt has been made to do an observatory study on the defined geographical territory. This research work is based on specific period and shall concentrate on in the NER and especially in the state of Assam. |
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| Methodology | Nature of the Study: The present study has been made on descriptive and observatory basis based on the secondary sources of data those are available in the public domain.
Sources of Data: This study is primarily based on the secondary data that available from the different public domain like books, periodicals, journals, web-sites and so on. |
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| Tools Used | The present study has been made on descriptive and observatory basis where tables, Pie Charts and Bar diagrams etc have been used which are based on the secondary sources of data. | ||||||
| Statistics Used in the Study | The
present study has been made on descriptive and observatory basis where tables,
Pie Charts and Bar diagrams etc have been used which are based on the secondary
sources of data :
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| Analysis | Indian
E-commerce Industry Analysis of the Secondary Data- Based on the secondary data, as available, the study of the overall position of position of the nation is very much desirable. The online users in India have continuously exhibited the willingness to make purchase over the Internet. Purchases across categories like Online Travel and e-Tailing have increased drastically over last few years. Whereas categories like Financial Services, Classified and other have evolved recently and shown upward growth owing to the increased awareness.  It has been
observed from the data that both at the pre-2020 and its future potentially is
unique by itself. Occupying the pecuniary occupancy at the US$ 84 billion
as quite a significant amount for a nation like India. In the AGM of 20-2,
Reliance has adopted a good number of Corporate decisions to boost up
Digital India Program. The increasing trend of Internet penetration and
following the concept of digital India, the holistic development in all
economic fields are indispensable in fact. This has opened an absolutely a
new dimension to the start-up entities followed by the trending high
of Indian GDP for such digital networking in the commercial entities. Further it has
also been observed from the report that the E-commerce industry in India
has been on an upward trend and it is expected to surpass the US to become
the second largest E-commerce in the World by 2034. Indian E-commerce sector is
going to attain US$ 99 billion by 2024 from US$ 30 billion in 2019,
respectively. The lead market players are in the field of grocery
and fashion/apparel, registering 27% growth rate in CAGR. The Indian
online grocery market is estimated to exceed sales of about Rs. 22,500/-
crores in 2020, a significant jump of 76% over the previous year.  |
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| Result and Discussion |
It
has been projected that the gross value added by e-Commerce Section from 46.30
(US billion Dollar) in 2020 to 111.40 in 2025 with CAGR of 19.24% Growing demand : India’s e-commerce order volume increased by 36% in the last quarter of 2020, with the personal care, beauty& wellness (PCB&W) segment being the largest beneficiary. Driven by beauty and personal care (BPC). India’s live commerce market is expected to reach a gross merchandise value (CMV) of USS 4-5 billion by 2025. E-commerce in India is at an all-time high in 2021 owing to the country’s 780.27 million internet users as of May, 2021. Increasing
Investment : The recent rise in digital literacy has led to an influx of
investment in E-commerce firms, leveling the market for new payers to set up their
base, while chumming out innovative patterns to disrupt old functioning. Policy
Support : 100% FDI is allowed in B2B e-commerce. As per the new guidelines on
FDI in E-commerce. 100% FDI under automatic route is permitted in the
market place model of E-commerce. Attractive Opportunities : Despite depressed consumer spending, economic, slowdown
and uncertainly created due to COVID-19, e-commerce players are expecting
strong sales growth in 2021. Online grocery, e-pharmacy and social
commerce are expected to see a bulk of the action in 2021. Keeping
a parity with this and based on the recommendations of TRAI, a few years back,
to boost digital connectivity the Union Cabinet has recently approved to
establish a high-speed Wi-Fi network in the PAN India through smart phone
application and Public Wi-Fi Access Network Interface (WANI). This is
going to bring a revolution in the internet connectivity all through
India. The
interesting fact is that only one-time registration is enough with any Wi-Fi
provider and therefore there will not be any requirement for
re-registration or authentication for accessing WANI network anywhere
across the country. It is inter-operable, making it seamless and hassle free
for users who may need faster networks. It will lead too creation of
Public Data Office Aggregator (PDOAs) at the top who will then enlist the
Public Data Operators to provide Wi-Fi. It is also proposed that there
will be no licence fee for providing such broad band internet through
Public Wi-Fi hotspots which will mushroom across cities and towns. For
making it a grand success and robust, the Government of India has
stipulated that PDOA and smart phone application providers will need to get
themselves registered with the telecom department through the online
registration portal. The
Ministry of Commerce and Industry, in October 2020 invited start-ups to
register at public procurement portal, Gem and offer goods and services to
government organisations and PSUs. Further
to note that through this concept of Digital India Campaign, the Government of
India is aiming to create a trillion-dollar online economy by 2025. Keeping a parity with the pace of the technological revolution in India, the public sector telecom service provider is also planning to revamp its network potentiality all over India. The BSNL has announced the launch of a satellite-based internet of things (IoT) device service that can be used across India where mobile towers are not present, including the seas within the country’s jurisdiction. It will be the world’s first satellite-based narrowband-IoT network.(Ref: Assam Tribune, dtd 11/12/2020) |
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| Findings | It is discernible from the aforesaid facts that the projected market size upto 2027 is said to be a 10-fold increase from 20 billion US$ to 200 billion US$. It is said to be a significant boost in the e-commerce industry all over India. The future growth of this e-commerce sales in India is to grow tremendously with a future projection of 84 billion US$ up to 2021. It is discernable from the aforesaid statistical fact that with the Government’s initiative the digital India move is taking a new shape to boost the Nation’s economy cum GDP to a new horizon. E-commerce scenario of Assam : The North Eastern Region consists of eight states viz., Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, Sikkim. Industrially, the NER continues to be the most backward region in the country, and the states in the region hardly have any industrial base, except Assam. Assam is the gateway of all the other states. Assam's economy is based on agriculture, oil and handicrafts. Assam produces a significant part of the total tea production of the world. Assam produces more than half of India's petroleum. Apart from tea, petroleum and petrochemicals, other industries in sectors like paper, fertilizer, cement, coke, lime, sugar, engineering, plastic, steel, printing, cosmetics, poultry and dairy products along with handloom and handicraft have thrived in the state.Moreover, with its rich flora and fauna, breath taking natural beauty, age-old temples and monuments, Assam offers a unique potential for tourism industries for domestic and foreign. The growth of all industries; large, medium and small has been uneven. The number of functioning large and medium industries in the NER has been negligible. Myntra.com conducted a study last year which highlighted the growing prominence of online shopping among the youth in Guwahati. This study ranked Guwahati 11th among the top 15 cities in India for online shopping. North east India is fast taking to online shopping. Ashutosh Lawania, Co-founder, Myntra said, "There has been a steady increase in the number of online shoppers from Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Sibsagar and Tinsukia in Assam in the past few months. The study also revealed that Myntra.com receives around 350 - 400 orders per day from Assam. North-East generate about 8% of traffic and business of Myntra. Lawania added, "Youngsters today are extremely fashion conscious and tech savvy here. Assam has always been known to be loyal markets." Digital commerce will give an increase in jobs, wealth and health. With the creation of new jobs, the economy improves. E- Commerce will have potential economic advantages in travel, tourism, sale of locally produced goods, and the banking industry because it lowers the cost of processing orders and payments and is accessible to the global market. E- commerce allows small business to sell their product from anywhere in the world. At the long run, producers will be able to provide better customer service and will enable people and rural areas to enjoy products and services that otherwise are not available to them. Even if digital commerce is contributing to the economic development of Assam there are various constraints on the economic development of Assam viz, infrastructure deficiency, product market, insurgency etc. With the use of IT, Assam can transform from a condition of widespread poverty to one of high-income status. Online retailing business is in rising in the North-Eastern Region (NER) in a very significant way. It is said to be the fastest growing markets for online shopping with the increasing numbers of young stars from the region. It has been observed that in the NER, very handful retail chain shops/malls are available but owing to the maximum coverage of digital television- either through dish antenna- either by cable operators or by cell phone-based platform, information to the newly launch products are very fast which boost up their demand for online products as those are usually not available locally or reaches to the local retail outlets in much delayed way. As a result, online retail shopping is the only option left out to the consumers to meet their additional demand. In fact, this region is one of the fastest growing market in the country as mentioned by Myntra Co-founder Mr. Ashutosh Lawania on March 24, 2014. (Reference: ETRetail.com). Moreover, Mr. Piyesh Bansal, CEO of Lenskart mentioned that about 20% of their business comes from the NER plus West Bangal as fashionable eyewear are much in demand in this part of the country. Apart from Guwahati Metro City, other non-metro cities like Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Sibsagar and Tinsukia hold a significant stake of the total demand of the eyecare turnover of Lenskart. While looking into the other brands, much in demand in the NER are: Puma, Nike, Adidas, CAT, Wildcraft, Duke, Lee, Levis, Clarks, Shree and myntra.com’s in- house Roadster Dress Berry and Anouk are preferred by shoppers in these areas. Regarding the shopping sites the most favoured platforms are Flipkart, Amazon India, ShopClues, Snapdeal, Paytm Mall, Myntra, Jabong, Bigbasket, Grofers, Pepperfry. In fact, keeping parity with the technological developments and digitization of various economic and financial activities, end users of this remote part of the nation have been upgrading their buying habits through online shopping. As such online surveillance of consumer goods and other consumable items have become a regular habit of NER. But the irony of this massive expansion of e-commerce is that there is a lack of appropriate regulatory to regulate the digital marketing of various consumer goods and as such some unscrupulous commercial entities, violating their business ethics, have started cheating the end users which are not at all warranted. As about 25% of the digital shopping of certain platform, are performed in the NER so, considering its reciprocation in the state’s GDP corpus, the government should come forward to frame suitable regulatory framework for its future growth in a befitting way. Consumer durables refer to those consumer goods that do not quickly wear out and yield utility over long period of time. Some of the common examples of these kinds of goods are electronic items, home furnishing, phones etc. With the advancement of technology, the demand for consumer durable goods is witnessing upwards movement in India. This in turn is leading to a strong competition among different consumer companies. The use of digital commerce would help those companies to face competition and to expand into global market as the price gap between goods is narrowing. India is expected to become the fifth largest consumer durables market in the world by 2025. | ||||||
| Conclusion |
The North-Eastern being a bottle neck zone in compared to the rest of the states of India. Connectivity is the lifeline of a commercial entity and the socio- economic development of certain geographical area also depends much on the basic infrastructure like communication etc. Considering the natural and the territorial boundaries of this part and owing to non-availability of suitable retail outlets in and around this territory, inhabitants of this area used to fulfil their demands by adopting digital shopping. The resultant effect of such habitual inclination towards the e-commerce has made the online shopping turnover a record high, in compared to the rest of India. Gradual industrialisation and opening of the international communication for trade and commerce will certainly boost up the
future potentiality of e-commerce too. It is evident that the netizens of the NER shall remain online shopping friendly so long the overall socio-economic developments are not made up to that horizon which the civilised society deserves to be in the pic of the echelon. |
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| Suggestions for the future Study | The marketing habits at the end user’s level, being a vital economic parameter of a commercial entity, play a very important role on the economic upliftment of a region. In North Eastern region, Assam being the gateway and its tremendous possibilities of being economically exposed to the rest of the south eastern countries, so the economic leadership role played by Assam is worth mentioning. As because, the NER play a unique role occupying the lead role at the higher echelon of the economic pyramid so a massive research work is needed to tap the optimum level of the economic activity covering all eight sisters of the NER and especially the state of Assam. Hence, there lays a good amount of potentiality for its future research works in the same domain. | ||||||
| Limitation of the Study | As the present study is based on descriptive and observatory in nature and on secondary data only so the inferences drawn at different levels of the study may not be generalised and may have some variances if it is to be studied on the primary data based on the field study on a certain geographical territory. | ||||||
| Acknowledgement | Dr Kalyan Mukherjee, Ex HOD, Commerce, RTU (Assam) deserves thanks for his suggestions to improve the paper. | ||||||
| References | 1. Bhatnagar, Subhash and Robert Schware (2000), Information and Communication Technology in Development: Cases from India, New Delhi: Sage Publications.
2. Datta ,Pratim.(2011).A preliminary study of e-commerce adoption in developing countries. Information Systems Journal.Volume 21, Issue 1, pages 3-32. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2575.2009.00344.x/ful.
3. Kumar, Poonam & Mittal, Saurabh & Nandi, Veena T. (December,2011). Digital India: Un Explored Horizon for Economic Development. International Journal of Research in IT & Management. voluem1issue 8, http://www.mairec.org.
4. Nair, K.G.K. and Prasad, P. N. (March,2002). Development through Information Technology in Developing Countries: Experiences from an Indian Stat. The Electronic Journal on Information Systems in Developing Countries, Volume 8, http://www. ejisdc.org.
5. Prasenjit, Nath. E-commerce: Socio –Economy Impact. The Echo-An Online Journal of Humanities & Social Science. Volume-I, Issue-IV, (April 2013), page228, :www. thecho.in
6. The Assam Tribune, dated :December 11th,2020. Web sites: www.ibef.org/industry/ economyand www. https://www.statista.com/statistics/792047/india-e-commerce-market-siz/ |
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