Digital coupons are slowly but gradually witnessing an increase in demand in the Indian market. Thanks to the savings it offers to the consumers and more and more businesses now distributing their coupons digitally, the market is recording strong Year-on-year growth is here.
As per a strategic white paper on digital coupon market released by Pepperwood Partners- a boutique investment banking advisory firm, Indian coupon market recorded an impressive growth of 629 per cent in 2011 with digital coupons being the catalyst of this growth. We believe that a number of companies in India are still depending on advertising in print medium and are yet to realize the importance of coupons as a tool to increase their sales. This offers companies like ours that are operating in digital coupons space a huge opportunity as print circulation has gone down globally including in India and the future definitely will see disruption in media businesses with digital solutions emerging as the most preferred option.
Interestingly, we as a company are seeing a strong growth in mobile traffic and tractions on our website, a trend that is going to result in taking the demand and popularity of digital coupons to the next level. As per a market survey conducted by Shoppirate.in in August 2015 where we spoke to 100 participants in New Delhi and Mumbai who were in a age group of 25-40 with annual income of minimum six lakhs, about 60 percent of the respondents had never used a coupon to purchase a product but surprisingly a strong 42 per cent of the remaining respondents had redeemed a coupon digitally. About half of them used a mobile platform to purchase a product availing a coupon. This clearly indicates that digital coupon market is growing strongly and consumers are shifting to mobiles for redemption of digital coupons.
The digital coupon market in India is bound to head the US market way where according to eMarketer, a company that offers intelligence and analysis on digital business, 92.5 million people redeemed a digital coupon in 2012 and the number of mobile coupon users rose from 12.3 million in 2010 to 53.2 million in 2014.
According to ‘India on the go - Mobile Internet Vision Report 2015’ by IAMAI and KPMG there were approximately 82 million 3G subscribers in India by the end of 2014. Considering that smart phones are reaching to the masses with manufacturers like Micromax, Lenovo and Lava offering smart phones at very competitive prices, buying on mobile platform has picked up tremendously. In fact this segment will emerge as the strongest medium to push the demand for digital coupons in the country. India will overtake the US as the second largest market for smartphones in the world by 2016 as smart mobile devices become affordable, global research firm eMarketer has expressed. A good example to reflect the demand for shopping on the digital platforms is the recent festive season sales of e-commerce companies like Flipkart and Amazon marketed as Big Billion Day. Both the companies recorded six-digit sales figures within hours after the launch. Flipkart reported sale of a million products with 6 million customer visits in the first 10 hours of opening the sale. The fact is that mobile apps of all these e-commerce companies are hugely popular are likely to contribute significantly to these numbers.
What makes us optimistic about the growth of digital coupons and mobiles emerging as the catalyst of its growth are because smartphones let the users access the deals on the go and can offer coupons that are relevant to a consumer depending on their location, behaviour and timeliness. Mobiles also offer players like Shoppirate.in, HappyCheckout.com, Couponsdunia.com, etc an opportunity to use these devices to deliver digital coupons in various ways like SMS promotions, mobile apps and mobile barcodes.
Digital coupons also offers an opportunity to companies that have no online or little online presence an opportunity to compete with the growing e-commerce entities by using platform like ours to utilize the digital platform to increase sales.
However, still there is a need to create awareness about the availability of digital coupons and educate consumers about the immense cost benefits related to its redemption. An effecting marketing approach in this regard can go a long way to help digital coupon market realize its true potential. Said so, the next couple of years will see both Indian companies and end consumers investing in digital coupons market.