Home furnishing and food were the most popular shopping categories with 42% and 18% hike in sales 5 days before Diwali: Report

• Indian consumers show digital endurance as the festive season drives sales across categories- findings by Criteo.
• As per the report, festive shopping started one month prior to Diwali in 2021, with +27% spike.

Criteo today released the findings from the 2021 & 2020 festive seasonality data. According to the 2021 data, home furnishing and food topped the list of the most popular shopping categories with +42% and 18% sales 5 days before Diwali.

Criteo’s data further revealed that this year marketers witnessed an early shopping hype during pre-Diwali from late September 2021, compared to mid-October in 2020. The highest peak observed during the period of the Big Billion Days was on October 3rd 2021, representing an overall Y-O-Y daily sales of 200% with the first 7 days of September 2020 as a baseline.

Taranjeet Singh, Managing Director of Southeast Asia and India, Criteo, said, “The Indian E-commerce industry had seen a categorial upsurge, enabling marketers to invest more in digital advertising including mobile marketing. We observed that consumers apply the basket and sales strategy during e-commerce sales specifically for the Big Billion Days period, wherein consumers place their items into shopping carts prior to the date of sale and complete their transaction while the platform commerce sale goes live. In Criteo’s 2020 data, it can be seen that people started to look into items approximately 3 days before, recording 120.8% in the indexed basket. Moreover, growing trends of video ads indicate that video is gaining importance this festive season. According to Criteo’s 2021 Holiday Commerce Report, consumers are receptive to ads when they’re watching videos and will take actions like searching for and purchasing the products they've seen.”

Indexed Daily Basket & Sales Events, 2020 (Baseline: first 7 days of October 2020)

The 2020 and 2021 data additionally reveal deeper insights on the evolving e-commerce trends expected this year:

• With September 2020 as a baseline, approximately 86% pre-Diwali daily sales were noticed in October 2020, whereas 2021 detected 200% of daily sales in the end of September, marking the beginning of the Big Billion Days period.

Indexed Daily Sales of 2021 & 2020 (Baseline: September 2020)

• 5 days before Diwali 2021 demonstrate an increase in the buyer’s retail shopping interest. Home furnishing and Food led the festival with respectively +42% and +18% sales (with First 7 days of October 2021 as a baseline).

Diwali 2021 Indexed Sales (Baseline: First 7 days of October 2021)

• With the first 7 days of October 2021 as a baseline, festive shopping started one month prior to Diwali in 2021, with +27% spike.
• For the rest of October, the sales remain moderate, however, there are two small increases around October 17th and 23rd, although it didn’t exceed the trend observed at the beginning of the month.
  Indexed Sales in 2021 (Baseline: First 7 days of October 2021)