E-Tailing in India – A Paradigm Shift Shopping in the Virtual World

The internet medium has revolutionized the way of living and shopping online has become a way of life. With easy accessibility of smart phones and internet connectivity, Indian consumers have embraced the virtual marketplace to buy products across all categories. For the venture capitalist and angel investors, E-tailing is a lucrative investment option. India has a big pool of internet savvy population that is not only accessing internet but also buying online. The internet has created a retail and consumer uprising by being a new platform for retailing. The virtual market place has a vast array from products – from grocery to gold jewellery and buyers buy everything. Consumers across all metros and towns from tier I to tier III are inclined towards online shopping. Since the entry of Flipkart in 2007, a significant number of E-tailers are inching space in the virtual world to woo customers to buy from them. In an attempt to study the causes why people shop online, this study finds that experiential factors dominate the buying motive. No discrimination exist with reference to age, gender, income level as all sections of the consumers buy online. This study also analyses the challenges facing the E-tailing industry and identifies a plethora of controllable factors which should be addressed by the E-tailers to offer the best online shopping experience to the consumers