Couponing trends in 2015: How often do you use your coupon for discounts?

For anyone who strives to aim for discounts on shopping, eateries and more, has to be aware of coupon services. The service offers up to date listing of coupons for Indian retailers. As the year is coming to an end, CouponDunia shared a report on the shopping trends using coupons in 2015. The study witnessed distinct shopping insights gathered from e-commerce websites and platforms on how, consumers extensively used coupons to save tons of money. According to the report, the Indian e-commerce market is set to reach $16.3 billion by the end of 2015 while the couponing business has achieved a 13.5 percent of the total e-commerce audience of India. This percentage roughly accounts for an approximate 2.2 billion of the business this year. Let’s take a look at some of the interesting insights on shopping trends witnessed in 2015 and the role of couponing in e-commerce industry. 95 percent of buyers are reportedly searching for deals online and 75 percent among them search coupons via couponing portals respectively. This turns out to be a rather surprising number as the report stated that 95 percent of buyers search for deals online which simply means Google is a prominent source for coupons. Considering that 75 percent users search for coupons via couponing portals indicates that the coupons available don’t necessarily fulfil all shopping needs online. The report points out that the massive chunk of coupon audience comes from consumers between the age group of of 25 years to 34 years in the country. Look like the younger generation seems to enjoy availing coupons for various reasons such as shopping, dining and so on and wish to gain as many discounts as they can in an effort to save money. Reportedly, the top 5 coupon categories were recharge, travel, fashion, food and drinking and mobiles and tablets. As many users in India still prefer using pre-paid cards or mobile recharging portals, there is no surprise that most of coupons searched for is recharge. Apart from Airtel, Vodafone, Aircel, Idea and others, charging via Paytm and other such services in the country is also on the rise. Travel tops second in the list, as most people usually compare different travel portals for cheap alternatives, searching for discounted coupons for traveling to any place works well. The latter three and the top categories in which consumers would like to avail a coupon a daily basis. Be it food, shopping or smartphones, one would always like the option to get discount on them, be it men or women. Coming to gender, out of these looking out for coupons on the internet, 64 percent were males and at 36 percent, almost half, were females! This comes as a surprise as most women, prefer to avail discounts on whatever they purchase, in comparison to men. Well, not necessarily. No matter how well e-commerce has set its base in India, women still want to go to a retail outlet and pick up what they desire. In this aspect, men might be a bit lazy and prefer to purchase goodies online. The research stated that maximum coupon searches for lingerie, were made by men aged 18-24 years from Mumbai and Jaipur, and not women! This might be the reason as most women would rather go to a shop to purchase it and men, would rather purchase it online for their loved one rather than going to a shop as they might feel shy. In addition, 58 percent males searched for kitchen and dining category coupons too. It looks like women choose the cutlery, and men search for coupons online to avail discounts on it as they this kitchenware usually tends to be on the expensive side. While the most searched terms on CouponDunia were Mobile recharge and taxi aggregator Ola, renting a car is tounted as one of the emerging couponing category of 2016. Who would have thought. Maybe renting a car now would become far cheaper than calling for a private taxi. In others, maximum coupon searches for ‘condoms’ came from Kolkata and search for sexual wellness coupons increased by 76 percent in New Delhi and Mumbai. It’s rather astonishing that people out there are looking for discounts and deals on such products too. When we talk about brands, consumers looking out for coupons by firstly Paytm, eBay and Amazon on the list. Others included are Snapdeal, Freecharge, Domino’s, Foodpanda, Jabong, Flipkart and Ola. Most of these users used their smartphones over the desktops. According to the report, 40 percent searched for coupons via the desktop while 60 percent searched via the smartphone. The top cities which look for coupon redemption are Mumbai, New Delhi, Pune, Indore, Hyderabad an Currently, the couponing growth rate in India stands at 62.9 percent with unique users per month reach 7.6 million. No matter what, the future of couponing business in India looks bright and promising!