Decoding Diwali 2022 eCommerce: Key Insights for India

A glimpse at how the Indian eCommerce marketplaces fared during the Diwali Mega Sale event in 2022- the biggest eCommerce festival in India. By Mahima Bhatnagar, Senior Growth Manager at PiWheel.

 Ever since the sturdy foothold of the eCommerce industry in India, the etailers give their customers a big chance to celebrate mega sale events with whopping discounts, deals, and offers throughout the year. The biggest of them is the Diwali event that begins 1 month before the main festival. It mimics the tradition of buying new items for personal use, home décor as well as gifting.

After two years of combating the Covid-19 Pandemic, encountering numerous restrictions, and staying indoors, India again celebrated its festivals with the same enthusiasm and optimistic spirit! The upswing of consumer sentiment is a notable drive for India’s economy which is bouncing back to pre-pandemic levels. Diwali 2022 mega event is the catalysing factor in India’s Growth Story.

Amazon in a statement said, “customers will get to experience more than 2000 new product launches and exciting offers across categories including Grocery, Fashion & Beauty, Smartphones, Large appliances & TVs, Consumer Electronics, and more from brands like Samsung, iQOO, LG, Xiaomi, Redmi, Tecno, BoAt, Biba, PUMA, Fastrack, Prestige, L’Oreal, Colgate, Aashirvaad and many more”.

This year, Amazon worked with over 150 influencers to generate 600 live streams to enable customers to make an informed purchase decision. The live streams carried live discounts during the sale which lasted until 1 week before Diwali.

PiWheel used its proprietary competitor and market intelligence tool to analyze the Diwali 2022 event for India- one of the fastest-growing eCommerce regions in the world- and found some very interesting data points that will be extremely helpful for eCommerce brands.

Diwali 2022- PiWheel Analysis: -

What we have covered:

-          Shakers of the event 2022: biggest gainers in sales rank

-          The promotions supported sales revenue and conversions of the shakers

-          Top-selling products in the top-selling categories

-          Some popular categories of deep-dive

-          Emerging categories in the marketplace

-          Key takeaways

Shakers of Diwali 2022 eCommerce Sale on Marketplaces

Like every year, the festive discounts were driven by the sales of consumer electronics. However, the overall sales of consumer electronics were lower this year in comparison to the 2021 sale period. One of the major reasons can be the COVID situation which is under control in most of the regions. People went out to purchase for the Diwali event as the offline stores offered some cost-effective options and discounts.

Other categories which were among the top gainers in eCommerce during the event were fashion, beauty, and baby products.

Flipkart announced an almost 80% discount on cell phones and headphones, and 43% on big-screen televisions. other electronics. For instance, the two new Google phones – Google Pixel 7 and Google Pixel 7 Pro were offered at special discounts.

Shakers Deep-dive

The ad spending of the top gainer, Cell Phones, saw a jump of a mere 0.5% from 2021 but the total traffic saw an increase of 15% from last year’s sale period.

Xiaomi was the top brand in terms of sales attributed to promotions this year. The brand’s sales increased by a whopping 300% due to the various offers run by the brand. The next 2 brands on the list were Samsung (-41.74%) and OnePlus (-1.61%).

Washers & dryers gained the biggest share from promotions.

Top-selling products in the top-selling categories

The top 4 products (by retail sales) in the 5 shakers categories:

Popular categories deep-dive

Fashion and beauty categories are also very popular among Indian consumers. With the fierce competition, brands deployed various tactics on both D2C and marketplaces to get to their consumers with the best offers.

1. Facial Skin Care

The category witnessed an uplift of 14.80% on eCommerce marketplace as compared to the 2021 Diwali sale period. There was also an increase of 60% in the number of promotions during the sale.

As per our market intelligence tool, ‘Facial creams, oils & moisturizers’ was the top sub-category which fetched 34.4% of the total sales for this category. ‘Facial washers & cleansers’ was the next sub-category.

2. Diapers & Diapering Accessories

The ‘Diapers’ category in baby care witnessed an increase of 22% in retail sales and a massive 78% in ad spending from 2021. These were some top brands in the category with market share change:

3. Fashion & Accessories

Diwali calls for a time to celebrate with friends and family which also calls for putting your best dress on for the festive events that happen in every neighborhood.

We saw some trends in the fashion and accessories categories which point towards growth in sales and a reduction in ad spend. Check out some data points below:

Takeaways

The 2022 Diwali sale is over but that doesn’t mean you wrap the event in the closet! Let’s look at a few quick tips so you can apply this mega event learning to your eCommerce business in the future: 

●        Data is the key: There is no denying the fact that data is of utmost importance for every campaign. Brands can only grow when they have the correct data at hand to analyze the rights and the wrongs. Take time to examine the same for this year’s Diwali sale event. This will help build a strategy for the upcoming sale events.

●        Start planning for future sale events now: 2023 will bring a new set of mega sale events for the Indian market. Prepare a list and start planning for the events from now. Get your creatives in place, get your inventory in order, and test new ad formats (and PiWheel can help!).

●        Monitor customer reviews and ratings thoroughly: More items purchased increase the chances of getting more feedback from customers which is a big opportunity to understand how your target audience perceives your product. Since 9 out of 10 customers read reviews before buying, it becomes all the more important to monitor the same. Take quick action on things leading to negative reviews such as misleading descriptions/ photos.

Data Source: PiWheel's market intelligence tool

Data timeline: Sept 18 - Oct 29, 2022, vs Sept 26 - Nov 6, 2021