Fashion will see the biggest growth this festive season: Redseer report

Despite concerns around inflation and discretionary spending, 83% of the respondents surveyed indicated a willingness to buy this festive season.

Despite concerns around inflation and discretionary spending, customers are looking forward to shopping this festive season. 83 per cent of the respondents surveyed indicated a willingness to buy this festive season, according to consulting firm Redseer's recent survey. This optimism is not just limited to consumers, but sellers are also expecting higher increases in sales.

The positive sentiments are driven by demand for fashion, mobiles, electronics and large appliances.

“The share of fashion in overall festive sale in festive week 1 is estimated to increase by 9 percentage points from 2018-22. Online fashion has grown 4x in the last four years compared to 3x growth for overall e-tail,” said Sanjay Kothari, Associate Partner, Redseer Strategy Consultants. “Fuelling this growth is the increasing shopper base from tier 2+ cities resulting in 2.5x growth in fashion shoppers in the last 4 years.” 

Consumer sentiment is particularly bullish for fashion and electronics this festive season, measured by the increasing willingness of consumers to shop for these categories compared to last year. For instance, 63 per cent of consumers are planning to spend on fashion categories compared to 56 per cent last year while 53 per cent of consumers are going to spend on electronics compared to 44 per cent last year.

Meanwhile, online fashion is only going to get bigger during the festive sale this year.  The growth of this segment is being driven by an expanding customer base from Tier 2+ cities and first-time customers who start their online shopping journey with fashion.

Festive sales will see higher participation from fashion sellers this year compared to other categories. “Being a fashion seller, I am hopeful that I will witness 2x to 4x growth,” said a seller in the report. Another seller added, “We have seen a surge in the fashion sales in the last few quarters and hoping the same for the festive season as well.”

Sellers on e-commerce platforms are also optimistic about volume growth during the festive season. Most sellers are expecting robust 20 per cent+ growth, 1.2x higher than last year’s festive sales. This is driven by better consumer awareness, stronger support from the platforms and better sales planning by the sellers and the platforms. However, sellers are planning to offer slightly lower discounts than last year.

This festive season will see a stronger platform-seller partnership. In a report released earlier this month, Redseer predicted the festive sales to grow to $5.9 billion this year during festive week 1 and $11.8 billion GMV (gross merchandise value) during the whole festive month.

• 63% of users plan to spend on fashion, which is 7pp higher than last year.
• Sellers on e-commerce platforms are expecting a 20% volume growth during the festive season.
• Sellers betting aggressively on fashion and strong platform-selling partnerships are some of the distinctive trends this year.