Diwali 2021 saw a 27% spike during early festive shopping: Criteo study

Global technology firm, Criteo, has released its 2021 and 2020 festive seasonality data. 

The report decodes the pre-Diwali e-commerce shopping sentiments, from late September 2021, as compared to the mid-October 2020 findings. 

Highlights of the report: 

• The end of September saw 200% of daily sales, marking the beginning of the Big Billion Days period, detected in 2021. 86% of pre-Diwali daily sales were noticed in October 2020 (baseline September 2020) 

• The early festive shopping saw a 27% spike, one month before Diwali 2021 (baseline first seven days of October 2020)

• 42% of the sales came from home furnishing, while 18% came for food five days before Diwali 2021

Taranjeet Singh, managing director, 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."

Singh added, "In the 2020 data, it can be seen that people started to look into items approximately three 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​.”