Perspective | 'Appifying' consumers..a boon or a bane ?

 ‘On-the-go’, a term that every marketer is targeting upon, is driving the whole Indian marketing scenario to a different level. It is not only driving the businesses but is actually re-defining the state of digital and marketing. The category of marketers that are most into re-defining their presence is the e-commerce category as they are making the world of digital take alternative turn from being browsed to being ‘appified’.

The growing world of mobile application has enabled the marketers to be just a ‘click’ away from their users. The turbulent growth in the “app world” has taken the market and the world by storm. Every brand has an app and every marketer thinks that by making an app they would reach their target audience in just one click, which fits the best in the current scenario of ‘E-commerce’. Also the consumers are much more progressive and evolved and are most likely called as the ‘mobile’ consumers. They believe in multi- tasking whether at home or work or anywhere. Two key aspects in the app world are simplicity and a broad range of functionality. When someone needs a specific piece of functionality, they would rather tap on an app instead of spending time browsing the web to meet their needs.

Most likely, it is fair to say that the ‘new age consumers’ prefer maximizing productivity and collaboration in just fraction of seconds. Looking at the way e-commerce players are leveraging their app businesses, the question that aroused in our mind was that, is the app business a success and are these apps able to build the right equity with their target audiences. We at Adgully caught up with few e-tailers and industry custodians like Mausam Bhatt, Sr Director, Mobile Marketing, Flipkart; Spokesperson from Amazon India; Praveen Sinha, Founder and MD, Jabong.com and Rohit Ohri, Executive Chairman, Dentsu India to dig deep into the scenario.

Amazon which has shopping apps on Android, iOS and Windows platforms launched their shopping app on Android & iOS platforms soon after they started their India operations. On asking about the growth witnessed through the app, a senior spokesperson commented, “Over these past 18 months, we have witnessed a significant increase in traffic & sales through our mobile platforms. Today nearly 50% traffic comes through mobiles and there is a sharp increase in customers as well as quantum of shopping on our apps.”

Even when Jabong came into existence they also launched their very own mobile application which proved to be a big success for them. Supporting the above conversation, Sinha said, “People are now spending more time on their mobile devices, in fact today even tier II and III cities have adequate access to smart phones along with a decent internet speed thus promising us a wider reach though the mobile app business.”

Adding further Sinha said, “Statistics prove that demand is not only coming from metros but even tier 2 and 3 cities. With the daily hustle bustle and long working hours, these customers are longing to stay updated at the convenience of a finger tap away.  A growth rate of over 50 per cent in sale is witnessed from these areas. A significant percentage of people prefer to shop via mobile application today as it allows them the leisure of multitasking. Through mobile application you get an option to choose from 1500+ brands offering more than 1,50,000+ products across the categories: Clothing, shoes, Accessories, Sports etc.”

Ohri opined, “The basic reason behind leveraging the consumers to download apps is that with apps the marketers can get closer to their target audience and they are constantly be able to give their consumers different discounts and deals which enhances the shopping experience of the brand.” With increasing competition and mobile phone penetration, launching an app and judging whether it is building right equity is a matter of concern hence when asked about the same, Sinha said,

“A definite increase in number of mobile transactions is witnessed in the recent years. Due to the penetration of smart phones even in smaller cities, increasing number of population is switching from PCs to mobile phones. The portability of mobile phones and the plethora of applications available on phones these days allows people to make quick transactions sans any hassles which otherwise might be present when dealing with a desktop. Targeting our users with app notifications has shown tremendous growth in revenues. It helped us in acquiring new customers and promoting right offers based on their browsing behavior, product selection.” 

Bhatt said, “More than 50% of visits and transactions take place through mobile. Android and iOS combined account for more than 80% of mobile visits and orders. Our app has been developed to work under poor network conditions in India as a lot of the growth is coming from smaller cities and towns with 2G data connections.”

Today consumers are very value conscious about what they are doing and what they are downloading in their phone. They would prefer downloading which gives them best results. Specifying the download rate, Amazon’s spokesperson said, “The download rate is quite encouraging and the repeat rate of customers is very healthy indicating a good shopping experience. We recently hosted the Amazon Appiness Day, as we wanted to create a special day for our shopping app and reward app users of which we received a fabulous response from customers.”

And interestingly, throughout the day, customers had the opportunity to win special prizes, right from Amazon gift vouchers and products such as the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 to 11 months of free shopping on Amazon.in.  Over and above this, there were interesting deals available through the app. He strongly opined that app adoption has been quite significant in India. Sinha proudly said that Jabong is one of the most downloaded apps in the fashion e commerce space.

Giving an example of the ‘The Big Billion Day’ Bhatt told us that Flipkart witnessed more than 1million downloads during this day, which made it the #1shopping app and on an average, every one spent almost 1 hour on the Flipkart app that day.”

Undoubtedly the smartphone penetration is taking a toll in every market but what is a matter of concern is the fact that the new age consumers are very fragmented hence these apps have a very small life on many of their phones. A lot of international reports have highlighted the fact that on average consumers download around 40 to 50 apps on their smartphone among the millions available and avidly use 10 out of those. Having said that as faster these apps are getting downloaded they also being sacrificed at the same rate if not required. So in that case, we posed a question to these marketers that whether a pre-installed app model works in their favor or downloading an app?

Sinha said, “We work on both models, with mobile companies and ad-networks. For preinstall app we have done an association with Nokia where our app is pre-bundled in their newly launched device Lumia 535. When customers download an app through their respective app stores, we have witnessed significant volume of downloads. In order to promote the app we use Google, Facebook, 3rd parties (ad-networks, publishers) following which we have seen an increase in the number of downloads.”

Ohri here opined, “Yes the fact is quite true that as faster the apps are getting downloaded they are being uninstalled at the same rate because when the space constraints come in, the consumers would sacrifice such apps at first. The shell life of these apps is very short hence the marketers should also keep in mind giving the best utility with these apps to their consumers.”

I am sure; we all must have heard or may be used also the heavily promoted app-sales by the big e-commerce players. With special discounts the players are reaching out their target audiences in an extensive way. The special discounts given out on our mobile app is surely a good bargain for our customers. Sinha here stated, “Additional discount, over and above given on the website otherwise, is given out with an aim to increase download of our app. It is an additional cost paid for striking a stronger chord with our customers and maintaining brand loyalty.” 

Whereas Flipkart’s Bhatt opined, “Flipkart is increasingly seeing a huge amount of growth coming from mobile apps - and majority of this is outside of metro cities. Today we are the number 1 shopping app in India. We are taking this opportunity to connect with and further delight our growing base of mobile app customers by designing a shopping festival just for them. For us, this event is a great enabler for people who primarily access internet via their mobile devices and may have been kept out of online shopping offers and discounts that have been driven by desktops in the past.”

Keeping all the above mentioned points under concern, we believe that undoubtedly the consumers are getting ‘appified’ day by day…and it is quite fair to say that apps are the next ‘go-to’ for the marketers…! By: Aanchal Kohli | Twitter: @aanchalkohli