Shopkeepers gear up against E-commerce this Diwali

With days to go the festival of Diwali, mall-owners have already stated to entice customers  in a bid to sway them away from e-commerce discounts and sales onslaught. 

Facing heavy competition from e-commerce, mall-owners in major cities are aggressively offering freebies and easy finance options with an hope to win back the footfalls and increase their business. 

Malls in cities like - Delhi -NCR, Mumbai, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru and Chennai armed with new sales strategy, have already started seeing increased activity before Diwali as per the feedback received from the retailers, said industry body Assocham.

Majority of the shopkeepers have collaborated with the manufacturers of consumer durables and fashion wears for attractive schemes with easy finance options like TV, refrigerators, off-season AC sale and even high end mobile phone handsets.

D S Rawat, Secretary General of Assocham said,"In any case, there is a better market experience this festive season, which is expected to give a leg-up to the consumer sentiment."

Assocham said that most of the retailers and consumer durable goods makers were optimistic on brisk business during the third quarter and thus increased their overall marketing budget by about 30% to 40%  for this period alone.

They plan to conduct these promotional activities until early January. 

In value terms, the growth is 20% higher compared to  previous year while in volume terms it could be around 10-15% higher, reveal the mall managers, it said.