People across the world celebrated Valentine’s Day last weekend. The ones who had the real reason to celebrate and gained the most were ecommerce players as love-struck buyers shopped online until their heart’s content.
One would associate the mushy day of love with women, but turns out men were the biggest buyers and heavy spenders around Valentine’s Day.
“You’ll be surprised to know that men are the biggest buyers of soft toys online. Even during this period, men are outspending women while buying gifts,” shared Rahul Taneja, VP – Category Management at Snapdeal.
In fact, marketing campaigns around the world are mostly targeted towards men during Valentine’s Day.
From buying soft toys to gifting intimate wear, online stores have made shopping a comfortable affair for men. Online sites such as Amazon, Snapdeal, Jabong, Myntra and Flipkart came to the rescue of clueless late-shoppers as they offered Valentine’s Day special looks, offers, gifting tips & ideas and themes.
The top selling product categories were fragrances, soft toys, clothes, jewellery, fashion accessories and lingerie.
According to Sudhanshu Gupta, VP, Paytm, “Valentine’s Day period sees a significant jump in gifting-oriented product categories such as beauty and personal care, apparel, soft toys, fashion accessories and even electronic and mobile accessories. These categories have seen a jump of more than five times during this period and the trend is expected to continue with a growth rate of 700%.”
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Many experimented with their choice of gifts this year. From gadgets, customized items, adult toys and adventure activities, buyers opted for the unconventional route.
Flipkart delivered GIFs on Valentine ’s Day. The #FlipkartGIFdelivery clicked with social media enthusiasts, as it was creative and engaging.
While explaining how the online sales of adult toys picked up around this time, CEO of ImBesharam, an Adult Lifestyle online store, Raj Armani revealed, “For Valentine’s we saw sales spike up 1.5 to 2x. In just two weeks we have got over 2,400 orders, of which most are specifically for women.”
Etailers raked in big moolah as premium delivery service of same-day and next day delivery was in great demand. Unlike festive season where people plan and place the order much in advance, on Valentine’s Day, buyers shop at the last minute and 2-5 days delivery schedule doesn’t work either.
An Amazon representative said, “Certain segments, which are V-Day focused, have seen lot of traction of course. As a consequence, that has been an upwards graph in same and next-day deliveries as consumers don’t want to get their orders delivered after the 14th.”
We have our very own big Festive Season Sale period between October – December. Etailers also want to create a different range of shopping events besides festivals and end-season sales, as additional revenue is desired by all. Something like US’s Cyber Monday and Black Friday sales or China’s Singles Day. Flipkart has managed to do a bit with Big Billion Days. Valentine’s Day is also emerging as one of the biggest online sales in India as people tend to spend more on love.
Editor team is specialized in introducing the marketplace content targeting the Indian online sellers. They plan and coordinate to bring the appealing content for the small businesses on how to partner with the e-commerce sites like Amazon and Flipkart and strategies for improving their online business.
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