Indians gauging e-commerce sales to fix prices of used goods

Indians stock a whopping Rs 78,300 crore equivalent of brown money, according to the third edition of the OLX CRUST (Consumer Research on Used Goods and Selling Trends) Survey, for 2015-16, conducted by the Indian Market Research Bureau across 16 cities. OLX coined the term "brown money", while conceiving the first survey, to represent the value locked in unused goods gathering dust in homes. Last year, the figure was estimated to be Rs 56,200 crore by CRUST.

According to the survey, more and more Indians now wait for e-commerce sales to compare prices of new items during the sale with that of used goods. It also estimates that the value realised through online selling is on an average 25 per cent higher than the one realised through offline selling, and 47 per cent higher than that through exchange across multiple categories.

Stocking of goods continues to rise. India has a 90 per cent stocking incidence rate, up 3 per cent from the last year. It cited the age-old excuse of "I'll use it one day" as one of the key motivators to stock goods. The report claims 27 per cent respondents who engaged in selling of goods cited "boredom" as a factor, especially for mobile phone which has emerged as a cluttered category in 2016.