Embrace Social Media with Retail

Retail and social media are two aspects of life. The first retail is where people visit in physically brows around and click on what they like sometime dislike, they download what they like the most and they share too. In social media they visit virtually where the involvement of mind is the most they brows around, like/dislike, download and share.

Increasing presence of people in social media, the time spent in it and the percentage involvement is increasing day-by-day which is clearly visible to all, no statistics required.

It has been suggested by many industry experts that around 70% of social media users in India access social networking sites everyday and around there are 7.84% population use internet in India that is more than 9 crore which is now currently stand to 100 million. If I recollect top 5 network sites like Orkut, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ibibo & Twitter they have presence of 10,17,8,5,4.5 million users in India respectively which combined to 52.5 million, if at all I consider the same users in all still there is more than 10 million alone visits this 5 sites & Facebook & Orkut together takes almost 90% share.

The leaders of the world have integrated various aspects of social media in different departments its time now for Indian companies to act upon on social media implementation. Many Indian retailers adopted social media but there is still a lot of it to be utilized & applied. There are lot of communication happning online but there are not many that are being addressed. Threat from specialist retailers is increasing as they increase there presence throughout the country. Brand loyalty will become vital as consumers move towards premium products and exclusive outlets for such brands will discourage them from visiting multibrand stores instead of exclusive outlets where they can see more product variety under the same brand. Multibrand retailers need to move to high brand awareness by engaging with customers more. The interacting level is shows how active the retailer are in social media space. Pantaloon & Shoppers Stop are among the first & second position ththe Lifestyle, Marks & Spencer, Globus & Westside among them. The most active visitors come from West & South India. Some of the amazing statistics revealed that 60% of the social networking traffic come from non-metro cities but the highest one is certainly from metro that is Mumbai. The active user age group are from 15 to 24 except LinkedIn which has 25 to 34 age bracket. The male are 80% where 20% are female users. It reveals that targeting male are much easier through social media than female. The maximum users come from less than 2 Lakh per annum income group (means students & career startups) but this group are the one of the highest spenders we have to keep this in mind. Visitors come almost 3 times a day & 45% around come during day time and spent more time on game & apps.

Thus, it is very clear that whatever the statistics are it is certain that social media will become one of the most inevitable tools for retailers in India in coming years thus they need to buck-up to adopt it not only at above the line but too they need to use it to tap the local market at below the line level.