[Seller Survey] Not Selling Multi-Channel? Seems Unlikely.

This report is based upon data collated from an online seller survey conducted by IOS some weeks ago. There were 42 merchants that responded to this survey. We will be publishing results over the next week or so. The results will not be entirely representative of the entire seller community due to the make up of the IOS subscriber base who are more eBay centric.

The IOS survey asked a number of questions regarding merchants’ selling habits, where we analysed a number of interesting data points that are currently happening in the selling arena of India. This week, we’ll have a look at how the various marketplaces are performing.

70% of merchants sell Multi-Channel.

70% of merchants are now selling on one or more channel. The top most channel that merchants are selling on is eBay.in. This wasn’t a surprising find as eBay is still the incumbent marketplace, however we were surprised to see that 70% of you now see the future as multi-channel selling.

100% of ShopClues and Tradus merchants sell Multi-Channel.

All sellers who were on ShopClues and Tradus told us that they sold Multi-Channel. They also came in as the second and third most popular marketplaces respectively when merchants are considering where to sell, with 50% of the merchants selling on eBay also choosing ShopClues. SnapDeal came in 4th, Amazon and FlipKart were in joint 5th, and Rediff Shopping close on their heels. We had heard that Amazon were out actively converting sellers in malls to list their products online, however all of Amazon’s sellers in this survey also sold on at least one other channel.

Who do sellers like the best?

Amazingly, you still love eBay the most, with 65% of you enjoying the eBay experience, compared with only 5% in opposition. SnapDeal comes up second, with 40% of respondents (and 50% of sellers who actively sell on the platform) proclaiming their love for the SnapDeal process. Merchants were most ambivalent about selling on Tradus and ShopClues, and were generally on the fence regarding Amazon.

Coming up next…

We’ll look at the merchants who answered the survey and the sort of business they’re conducting online.