Carat – the media agency from dentsu India, has launched a festive report ‘Reimagining India’s Festive Landscape 2023’. The report offers a perspective to revolutionize brands’ approach to the upcoming festive season in India.
As per the report, approximately 65 percent of people witness an uptick in their spending during the latter half of the year, people in their browsing stages often spend between 1.5 to 2 months in the research phase. 36 percent of survey respondents express their commitment to stocking up on traditional sweets and snacks.
Women assume the role of primary festive shoppers for the house. Since families and social units are the biggest subtext of the festive season, festive shopping is also approached often as a family as opposed to from the point of view of an individual. Even the purchase of clothes and accessories of a family members for the festival becomes a collective decision. 68 per cent women take charge of these decisions, orchestrating the purchases prioritizing self, family, and associates/staff, in that order.
This is an important point to consider when it comes to making a choice between targeting only women for certain festivals as opposed to collective targeting. Hiked budgets and temporary suspension of too many financial curbs Urban Indians will have a spending propensity index of 96.43. This is a marginal increase over last year’s index of 94.45. It’s further propelled by an increased amount of savings as expressed by the buyers, leaving more money to expend on festivals.
27 percent respondents claimed to have more savings this year, leading up to the festive season in comparison to the last year. Not only the average shopping basket amount, but the average basket size (which includes clothes, accessories, F&B, electronics and health & beauty) is also estimated to go up this festive season. Buyers will thus be willing to experiment with brands. Discoverability might be a solo journey, but consideration and purchase are not. Broadly speaking, buyers are discovering brands predominantly on social media. In fact, phones being the first screen, plays a pivotal role in the entire festive purchase journey.
Close to 46 percent buyers are discovering new brands through their mobile devices. Staggeringly, 80 percent of the buyers are even collecting information through their smartphone to make a sound purchase decision. Once the discovery happens, there is often more than one person in the decision. As brands facilitating this shopper journey and trying to grab the buyers’ attention in this cluttered environment, we need to keep in mind this festive nuance of buyers wanting a collective festive shopping experience.