Consumer shift is moving from planned to impulse shopping

As India enters its most significant retail season of the year, marketers are eager to decode the trends that will define consumer behaviour. Tonic Worldwide’s insights division, GIPSI, has launched ‘The festive report part-2’, offering six critical insights aimed at performance and growth for brands targeting the 2024 festive season.

As businesses ramp up their festive strategies, GIPSI’s blend of human intelligence and AI (HI+AI) offers a data-driven look into evolving consumer dynamics, highlighting crucial areas such as quick commerce, app metrics, first-party data, and online reviews.

The report, based on GIPSI's Deep Listening model, scours multiple data points to deliver actionable insights. "Part-2 of the report focuses on growth, shedding light on insights like quick commerce, which has immediate implications for the festive season," said Anjali Malthankar, national strategy director and GIPSI co-head. For marketers working on a digital agenda, these findings provide a roadmap to enhance engagement and ROI during the festival period, building on Part-1’s focus on customer engagement.

One of the standout findings of GIPSI’s ‘Festive report’ is the 22% rise in users on India’s top five quick commerce apps in pre-festive 2024. This surge highlights a shift in consumer behaviour from planned to impulse buying, with consumers increasingly using quick commerce platforms for last-minute festive purchases, ranging from pooja essentials to electronics. This trend presents a significant opportunity for brands to capture impulsive buying behaviour on quick commerce platforms during the festive season.

The rise in impulse shopping is coupled with another consumer behaviour shift—an increased willingness to share personal data in exchange for sign-up discounts. GIPSI noted a threefold increase in mentions of ‘sign-up discounts’ on X since January 2024, highlighting the growing importance of first-party data (1PD) collection. The festive season provides a prime window for brands to gather valuable consumer data, which can be nurtured and leveraged for personalised engagement beyond the festive period.

A significant challenge for both brands and consumers is the growing issue of fake online reviews. According to GIPSI, there has been a 96% rise in complaints about dishonest reviews on X between May and July 2024.

The report also reveals that Indian consumers are turning to platforms like Instagram, with over 86,000 posts under hashtags like #triedandtrue and #notsponsored, seeking authentic product feedback. As consumers increasingly rely on reviews as a pre-purchase check, brands must ensure the quality and authenticity of their online reviews to retain consumer trust during the festive season.

Meanwhile, app metrics show a notable 7% drop in consumer retention on India’s top five online shopping apps during the festive season. This decline suggests that consumers are experimenting with new apps or deleting them due to factors such as storage limitations. For brands, the takeaway is clear: focus on transaction activity rather than app installs, as app loyalty is increasingly fluid during the festive period.

Music and video streaming are also proving to be a significant part of the consumer's festive routine, with a 20x increase in searches for ‘home decor ideas’ and an 82% rise in ‘recipe ideas’ during the festive season of 2023 compared to the previous period. Consumers are also spending more time streaming music—3,000+ more minutes during the festive period. For brands, this indicates the importance of tapping into these channels with personalised content that resonates with festive shoppers looking for inspiration.

Lastly, GIPSI highlights that brands can jump straight to the bottom of the purchase funnel (BOFU) during the festive season. With 2.2 million more searches for sales in pre-festive 2024 compared to 2023, consumers are already in-market and actively seeking deals. For brands with limited budgets, focusing on BOFU strategies can drive conversions efficiently during this crucial period.

As Unmisha Bhatt, co-founder and CSO at Tonic Worldwide, remarked, the second part of the report provides ‘performance-focused’ insights that aim to maximise the ROI of marketers’ festive ad spending, targeting the crucial lower end of the purchase funnel. GIPSI’s insights offer a clear pathway for brands to optimise their strategies and seize the opportunities that India’s dynamic festive season brings.