Amazon is now most preferred over Flipkart for online shopping, says survey

US-based e-tail company Amazon continues gallop in the Indian online retail market, with the latest survey by Forrester’s Consumer Technographics Asia-Pacific Online Benchmark indicating the former’s growing dominance over its nearest rivals in the past few years. As per the Forrester’s survey, Amazon has pipped its nearest competitor Flipkart as the preferred online retail destination for consumers in the country’s metropolitan areas in 2016.  The survey reported in The Hindu BusinessLine  shows that 76 percent of respondents purchased online from Amazon in 2016, a huge leap over just 30 percent of respondents transacting in 2014. In comparison, Flipkart witnessed a flat growth, as 68 percent respondents bought from it in 2016 compared with 63 percent in 2014. The latest survey comes after Times of India last week reported that Amazon.in app surpassed Flipkart to emerge as the most downloaded app on Google and Apple app stores in the first quarter (January-March) of the current year. Although Amazon forayed into Indian online retail market three years back in June 2013, much after the homegrowns Flipkart and Snapdeal had launched their services, the US e-tailer made rapid seems to have strides here since then. In fact, Amazon is already closing the gap with Flipkart in India, with its chief executive officer Jeff Bezos last month pledging to invest another $3 billion in his company’s India operations. According to a media report, Amazon displaced another home-grown ecommerce giant Snapdeal to become India’s second-largest online marketplace by shipments in March. Amazon India’s unit market share surged to an estimated 21-24 percent from 14 percent in March, while Snapdeal’s fell to 14-15 percent from 19 percent, an ET report said. To sum it up, local knowledge could give Flipkart an advantage but Bezos has demonstrated a willingness over the years to keep pouring in money and accepting losses until the battle is won, a Bloomberg report had said. “Amazon’s consistent performance over the last year and our stellar first quarter indicates that the tide is turning,” Bloomberg quoted Amazon’s India chief Amit Agarwal in an e-mail interview.