Diwali consumer spending set to grow by 62% over last year

A recent webinar by MMA Global India, featuring Amazon Ads, highlighted advertising strategies for the upcoming Diwali season. The session, moderated by Vijay Iyer, director of Amazon Ads India, included insights from professionals at HP India, Orient Electric, and HiveMinds.

The discussion centred around the importance of balancing immediate sales with long-term brand value, a theme echoed by Moneka Khurana, country head of MMA Global India.

Research commissioned by Amazon Ads with YouGov revealed that 62% of shoppers plan to spend more this Diwali compared to last year. The survey also found that consumers are thinking about Diwali months in advance, with 47% starting to think about the festival before July and 78% before September.

With shoppers beginning to think about Diwali months in advance, industry experts advised brands to prepare early and focus on products that align with consumer interests and behaviour during this festive period. Shivani Chopra, marketing head—consumer PC and peripherals at HP India pointed said, “Consumers have already started their research and evaluation about products that they want to purchase around the festive season. If you haven’t started planning yet, it’s beneficial that you start soon. Identify your key products and fully commit to them, while keeping the consumer journey at the forefront.”

Echoing this sentiment, Anika Agarwal, chief marketing and customer experience officer at Orient Electric noted that since people are looking for new products, the July-August period is a good build-up phase, to place new launches in shelves for consumers. “Choose strategies according to market size and brand size and move forward accordingly. Choose where you have a right to win and explore that funnel,” she advised.

The findings also showed that 64% are eager to buy gifts for family and friends, while 58% are interested in shopping for themselves or their homes. Popular categories include fashion and accessories (62%), smartphones and tablets (58%), and personal care products (47%).

Diwali is traditionally recognised as a time when customers often explore new products, brands and categories. The survey found that 55% of consumers are open to exploring new brands, and 67% use retail media channels like Amazon for research.

Speaking about this, Jyothirmayee JT, founder and chief executive officer of HiveMind pointed out that discovery is massive in the pre-consideration phase. “If you have niche products that you thought were not suitable beyond a certain cohort of audience, then this is the time to educate and to start going into adjacent categories and drive new-to-brand and new-to-category consumers,” she noted.

Last year, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) stated that retail markets in the country witnessed record business of Rs. 3.75 lakh crore ($ 45 billion) during the festive season. Praveen Khandelwal, secretary general of CAIT further stated that prior to 2023, around 70% of the Diwali festival market was made entirely of Chinese goods. However, last year almost only Indian products “were sold and purchased in Diwali," the trade body said.