Safety factor swells the carts of e-commerce firms this festive season

If you visit the Amazon website to buy a 64 GB iPhone 11, you’ll get it for Rs 49,999 with an exchange offer of up to Rs 11,000. The same phone is available for Rs 48,900 after cashback at Croma store with the best price after exchange dropping to Rs 45,900. Industry experts point out that discounts are coming down on e-commerce platforms as compared with previous years with deep discounts only on certain items.

Still, e-commerce is expected to do robust sales of $7 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) compared to $3.8 billion in GMV sales during the same period in 2019, according to a RedSeer estimate. Hence, is not only this price difference that is pushing people to choose online over brick-and-mortar this festive season, say analysts. The pandemic has disrupted how people buy products and services and how they perceive e-commerce.