Lockdown impact: 40% of consumers opt for home-delivery to reduce exposure

Lockdown impact: 40% of consumers opt for home-delivery to reduce exposure

Coronavirus crisis: Out of the respondents who said they prefer home-deliveries, 21 per cent said that they did so to minimise exposure while 6 per cent said convenience

Coronavirus lockdown: Most people still prefer local markets

Coronavirus lockdown has changed the way people shop. To say otherwise would be to disregard the emerging patterns. A recent survey underscored that a significant amount of consumers depend on home-delivery for essential as well as non-essential supplies. The survey also showed that most people prefer not to step out to minimise exposure.

A LocalCircles survey states that 40 per cent of Indian customers prefer getting their household and personal supplies through home-delivery. According to the survey, 21 per cent said that they were buying from e-commerce sites, while 19 per cent said that they were getting supplies delivered from local and retail stores. Only 1 per cent said that they were buying from the mall, while 11 per cent said that they preferred the department store and 47 per cent said that they buy from local markets.

Out of the respondents who said they prefer home-deliveries, 21 per cent said that they did so to minimise exposure while 6 per cent said convenience. A total of 71 per cent said that minimising exposure and convenience were the main reasons.

However, everything is not rosy when it comes to home-delivery. Online orders come with their own challenges. The respondents said that the top issues that they have while purchasing items from online portals revolve around price, slow delivery and even product quality. While 32 per cent said long deliver times plagued their orders, 20 per cent cited pricing as an issue. Ten per cent said that product quality is the biggest challenge, while 8 per cent said their issues were payment-related.

"Most major grocery platforms for instance have reduced the discounts offered on even their in house brands from 25-35 per cent range to 0-15 per cent range. Hence the consumer is clearly paying for the convenience. Also, exchange and returns according to consumers have become difficult due to restrictions placed due to containment zone rules, colony and society rules where one has to go to the gate even if they were trying to get something of nominal value replaced," said the report.

The survey was conducted by LocalCircles across 231 districts in India. They received 25,000 responses, out of which 61 per cent were men, 39 per cent women, 57 per cent from Tier 1 districts, 31 per cent form Tier 2 and 12 per cent from Tier 3, 4 and rural districts.