India set to shop online this festive season, reveals survey by Disney+ Hotstar

Disney+ Hotstar’s Festive Shopping Sentiment survey reveals online advertisements will be the preferred mode for higher engagement.

India is gearing up for its biggest festive season, and Disney+ Hotstar, India's leading streaming platform, is the ultimate destination for brands to reach premium, affluent, highly engaged audiences to establish brand recall and connect with their customers. The platform with its power-packed content line-up, is set to be a part of every celebration, as the country turns online for their festive shopping needs.

After 2 years of subdued celebrations, consumers are looking forward to celebrating this festive season with renewed fervor, which presents a great opportunity for brands to connect with their audiences to build awareness and purchase intent. As per Disney+ Hotstar’s Festive Sentiment Tracker survey, 87% of consumers feel that the spending capacity has either improved or remained the same compared to last year, indicating a high propensity to spend in the upcoming festive season.

66% of consumers will spend more compared to last year, and another 22% will spend nearly the same on festive shopping. Moreover, 87% of the consumers will shop for themselves and 55% will shop for gifting. Shopping for gifting is even higher among 30+ consumers (60%).

The survey conducted to understand the shopping sentiments of Indian consumers in the upcoming festive season also noted that apparel and fashion, mobile phones, and beauty and wellness will be the top three categories for consumers this year, with consumers planning to make purchases from 2 categories on an average.

Providing marketers with insights needed to fine-tune their media and marketing strategies for the festive season, the survey also revealed that online advertisements would be the biggest source of information for products that consumers will buy (55%), followed by TV ads (33%). This makes online promotional presence for brands a must-be this year. Consumers, too, will be extensively vying online portals for their festive shopping, with 68% doing their cart checkouts online, followed by malls (39%) and standalone stores (15%). Online payments will also be the preferred medium (34%), followed by card payments (28%).

The incoming festive season and its ensuing retail opportunity paint an optimistic time for commerce, mainly e-commerce. Since online ads will be the biggest source of product information, the OTT space owing to its reach amongst premium, affluent audiences with high engagement rate, will help brands convey their festive offerings to their consumers effectively. Being a leader in the OTT space, Disney+ Hotstar provides its advertisers the unique opportunity to reach a highly engaged premium audience in a brand safe environment. Its wide range of ad formats and sharp targeting options, enable advertisers to highly customize their campaigns to best suite their marketing objectives, thus enabling brands to generate high recall and purchase intent.