Mum…erm...Baby is the word!

Typically when you say babies, you evoke a whole lot of super positive expressions (Check all the “awwww” comments on any baby pic posted). Its always by people who have never had one yet or from parents whose kids have outgrown the stage :). That’s because the people who have babies, have no time to sometimes even take a loo break, leave alone going awww on someone else’s baby. (Actually, they do manage to steal time to click & post pics of their own babies but the paucity of time is very real!). I have 2 babies of my own, well technically kids who are now almost 7 & 4.5 years old. And one of the big things that’s different about me raising them vs my mum raising me & my brother is e-commerce!

India has the largest population of children in the age group of 0-3 in the world. At bigbasket, basis the shopping carts, we estimate over half of our households have kids & about a third of that set have babies. According to a report by TechNavio, the baby care market in India is expected to grow at an annual rate of over 17% in terms of revenues during the 2014-2019 period to reach over $31 billion. Today in the online space, firstcry, flipkart, amazon, hopscotch, mybabycart are some of the more popular sites to buy baby products. Their strategy has been to deep discount the diapers category & offer year round promotions on others to acquire customers. Recently, firstcry has been advertising range too on television.

Honestly online shopping has been a boon to mums when it comes to caring for their baby’s needs. Its not difficult to see why most urban parents are increasingly turning to virtual stores for their regular purchases. There are way more choices, lots of interesting offers and discounts, home delivery and now increasingly, the option of being part of a larger community of moms & dads who slug it out for their precious babies. But I think there is a larger emotional play too that should be studied to market this category better. Here is a sample of the mind maps that that influence shopping for this category (Note: Its not comprehensive)

The orange blocks are the negative emotions felt while the green ones are the positive ones. Online shopping is a delight and provides a great relief to the customers. That usually results in a feeling of gratitude to the service provider & can make for a very loyal set of customers. No wonder, companies are sealing the deal with lucrative subscription models & offers to get a large chunk of the baby spends, which are not at all trivial.

Already it is estimated that over 15% of urban baby market is online. It is bound to go northwards for some time to come. Marketing for this category online has to play to these emotional insights as much as range & pricing that are today’s mainstay to draw customers to adopt the channel. That’s how it will end up getting a much larger pie & also move to profitability. For rest of ecommerce, a customer acquired through baby shopping is most likely to branch out to many other categories online & stick with it. So from a customer acquisition point of view, mum’s the word!

Interestingly, it’s also mother’s day this weekend. But it’s the child that gave you the qualification – something which I think overshadows every other achievement, status, title or satisfaction one can ever get in life. And while we bask in all the glory that is motherhood, we are verily passing on some of that glitter to e-commerce for sure! Happy Mother’s day to every mum in the world. Cheers!