65% of Indian Consumers Express Positive Buying Sentiment in Diwali’20: TRA Whitepaper

 TRA Research, India’s leading consumer insights and brand analytics company, today released a whitepaper titled TRA’s Diwali 2020 Buying Propensity Report gauging the changing buying mindsets and sentiments for the upcoming Diwali in November 2020. 65% of all consumers expressed a Positive Buying Sentiment as compared to now, and 28% felt it would remain the same. The Apparels category was a positive outlier and had the Highest Buying Priority at 3.11 times the average of all other categories. Mobile Phones, Consumer Electronics and Two-wheelers were on Very High Consumer Buying Priority, followed by Home Furniture, Jewellery and TVs, which were on High Priority. The survey was conducted with 503 consumer-influencers across 16 cities between 9th June and 15th July 2020. 

Speaking about report N. Chandramouli, CEO, TRA Research, said that, "Diwali has traditionally been a period of consumption boom as consumers tend to increase spends, and brands scramble to catch their attention. This Diwali will be a deciding factor for many brands, as they prepare trepidatiously for the festive season. This report gives a very good view on which will be the preferred categories for Diwali buying."

"This is good news of course, but the pre-Covid consumer spends were already lower on account of a depressed and strained economy, and a comparison between the consumer household spends between the two Diwalis of 2019 and 2020, show that this year is likely to see 5.1% lesser spends than the previous one,” Chandramouli added. 

‘Medium Consumer Buying Priority’ included Personal Accessories, Cars, Laptops and Kitchen Appliances, while ‘Low Consumer Buying Priority Zone’ includes Travel, Health Insurance and Home Renovation.

The survey results also revealed that online shopping is set to see an unprecedented boom in a post-Covid-19 world. Also, kirana stores or small standalone store, close-by neighbourhood stores, local groceries are the preferred places to shop. Big formats stores like Supermarkets, Hypermarkets, Branded outlets are unlikely to see many visitors, and Malls carry a negative sentiment due to tremendous consumer reluctance despite relaxed norms and promise of better safety. 

Nearly 95% consumers rated Product Quality as the most important influence when making purchases for Diwali 2020 followed by product usefulness (89%), Product Price (88%), Buying Convenience (87%) and Brand Name (86%). Advertising at 71% remains the lowest choice driver for Diwali shopping.

About TRA Research

TRA Research, a Comniscient Group company, is a consumer insights and brand intelligence Company dedicated to understanding and analyzing stakeholder behavior through two globally acclaimed proprietary matrices of Brand Trust and Brand Desire. TRA Research conducts primary research with consumers and stakeholders to assist brands with their business decisions based on Consumer Behaviour insights.

TRA Research is consulting brands on transitioning during and after the Covid-19 crisis, to help them be more aligned to consumer and client expectations. TRA Research is the also the publisher of TRA’s Brand Trust Report and of TRA’s Most Desired Brands.

For more information, please visit www.trustadvisory.info

Two Web startups interest AOL

Internet pioneer AOL, which Time Warner plans to spin off into an independent company later this year, announced on Thursday that it had bought two small Web startups focused on local content.

AOL, in a statement, said it had purchased Patch Media Corp., a local news and information platform for local communities, and Going Inc., a platform for sharing information about events in major cities.

Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed.

"Local remains one of the most disaggregated experiences on the Web today -- there's a lot of information out there but simply no way for consumers to find it quickly and easily," said Tim Armstrong, who was hired away from Google this year to become AOL chairman and chief executive.

"It's a space that's prime for innovation and an area where AOL has a significant audience and a valuable mapping service in MapQuest," he said.

"Going forward, local will be a core area of focus and investment for AOL," Armstrong said. "The acquisitions of Patch and Going will help us build out our local network further."

Patch.com is currently available in five local communities in the United States and expects to be available in a dozen by the end of the year.

Going.com provides information for young people about what is going on in major US cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and Boston.

"By joining with AOL, we have the opportunity to greatly expand the reach of our platform to more cities both in the US and around the world," said Going chief executive Evan Schumacher.

AOL is currently the number four gateway to the Web after Google, Microsoft sites and Yahoo! and has been trying to refashion itself recently as a popular one-stop portal.

Agencies

Is HCL BPO eyeing acquisition in US, UK and Australia?

HCL BPO is looking for acquisitions of platform-based BPO firms in the US, UK and Australia with revenues of up to $250 million, its chief executive said. “We want to de-link revenue growth from headcount growth. So, we want to acquire companies in English-speaking countries that derive revenues from output or outcome-based pricing and platform-led services,” HCL BPO president and CEO N Ranjit said.

Last year, the BPO arm of HCL Technologies had acquired two firms —UK-based Liberata Financial Services (LFS) and US-based Control Point Solutions. The BPO firm aims to earn revenues of $1 billion by 2010-11 and expects about 56% or $560 million to come from acquired entities.HCL BPO had revenues of about $223 million in the year-ended June 2008.

Confident of closing at least one buyout this year, Ranjit said the company’s strategy is to buy loss-making or marginally profitable entities at low prices and turning them around. So, while BPO firms typically go under the hammer at 1.5-2 times their revenues, Control Point, with revenues of $27 million, was bought for $20 million. HCL BPO paid $2 million to acquire LFS’ fixed assets and committed an investment of another $24 million. The firm is confident of turning around both acquired companies by the end of calendar year 2009.

The two acquisitions impacted the margins of the BPO firm. In the quarter ended Dec ‘08, its EBITDA margin went down to nearly 14% from 26% a year ago. “We completed the integration of Control Point and LFS in the Oct- Dec quarter. We are hopeful of achieving margins of over 25% by 2009-end ,” Ranjit said. The BPO firm’s revenues were also impacted due to the pound losing value against the dollar as about 72% of its revenues come from the UK.

The company, which only has one Indian client in a large auto maker, said it will not look at increasing its exposure to the domestic market at this stage. “Until Indian companies show willingness to pay more for value addition and information security, we will not look at the market,” Ranjit said.

Agencies