A recent eBay marketplace study showed that half of mobile purchases occur outside metro centers.
eBay has just released the results of one of its most recent surveys, which have indicated that 49 percent of m-commerce users – that is, about half of the people who participated in its study – are not from metropolitan areas.
The survey involved the participation of 1,345 Indian people who are mobile users.
This is the first study that eBay has conducted regarding the use of m-commerce in India. For the purposes of the research, it deemed the largest ten cities to be metropolitan areas, and the remainder of the country to be non-metropolitan.
The survey found that many non-metro cities have a far larger share of m-commerce shoppers than large urban centers.
An executive from the company explained that the non-metropolitan cities of Vijayawada, Mysore, Surat, Vadodara, Bhubaneswar, Thiruvananthapuram, and Kochi all have notably larger shares of shoppers who use m-commerce than the cities that were deemed to be metro areas. There were 4,306 cities and towns that were involved in the eBay study. Among them, 4,296 were considered to be non-metropolitan.
In m-commerce it is about a fifty-fifty split between non-metropolitan and metro areas. This is much different than the trend in e-commerce, in which non-metropolitan areas were recorded to have a share of only 20 to 40 percent. The study also pointed out that over the last seven years, there has been a growth of 70 percent in overall online shopping in the country.
Previous eBay studies have covered fewer cities. In 2005, the survey included only 240. The official from the company explained that “The number of hubs increase only when there are buyers and sellers there”.
According to eBay India’s country manager, Muralikrishnan B, when speaking about the adoption of m-commerce, it “has increased significantly in the country due to multiple factors such as enhanced 3G penetration and availability of affordable smartphones. As pioneers of mobile commerce in India, it is heartening to see such a huge shift in the way Indians shop.” The popularity of the channel has also been boosted by the expansion of wireless in the country.
