The e-commerce sector has already become the next big thing in India! However, to make the sector sustainable and enable its long-term growth, it is critical that trust and customer service aspects are focused upon.
To take a control on that, the Indian government recently announced the new e-commerce norms.
According to a recent survey, the Indian consumers don’t favour regulations to check discounts and cashbacks offered by online marketplaces. They instead want the Centre to subject social networks such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram to the upcoming e-commerce policy.
A LocalCircles survey shows that over 60 per cent of the respondents believe that the e-commerce policy should regulate all products and services sold on internet in India, whereas about 88 per cent said that social networking platforms should also be subjected to the e-commerce regulations.
Over 93 per cent of the respondents said that e-commerce sites should acknowledge complaints within 72 hours, whereas 91 per cent said that a maximum standard time should be defined for them to close all complaints.
The survey comes ahead of the release of the new e-commerce policy, which according to government sources, is largely targeted at putting an end to differential and predatory pricing practices of online marketplaces.
Consumers, at the same time, seem to want their benefits to be kept in mind when framing any policy.
On controlling counterfeit products, about 78 per cent of the respondents said that the counterfeit activity on e-commerce sites will reduce if the details of the sellers like GSTIN, address, name, etc. are published on the site, whereas 86 per cent also want e-commerce sites to not charge the consumers on counterfeit products.
More than 55 per cent of the consumers believe that e-commerce sites should be held responsible for authorised seller documentation.
The consumers say that the e-commerce sector should be regulated, and any policy, which is designed by the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, should cover both products and services aspects of the e-commerce industry.
