42% users say e-commerce sites display country of origin: LocalCircle study

It has been almost two years since govt asked online platforms to ensure compliance to display this information

About 42 per cent consumers surveyed found e-commerce app platforms to be compliant in making country-of-origin information available, said a survey conducted by LocalCircles.

The survey also found that the percentage of e-commerce consumers looking for country-of-origin detail has also gone up. The percentage of e-commerce consumers that looked for country of origin information when shopping online in 2020 was 37 per cent. This rose to 43 per cent in 2021 and is now at 51 per cent, indicating that India’s e-commerce consumer is increasingly becoming savvy and is opting to make informed decisions.

Recent geopolitical tensions were found to be the top change for a reduction in China-made products among Indian consumers. Therefore, effective compliance with the ‘country-of-origin’ rule became essential to enable Indian consumers to make an informed decisions while purchasing goods, said the survey.

A 2020 survey in by LocalCircles revealed that 39 per cent of Indian households did not buy any Made-in-China products during the past 12 months. Further, of the households that did buy Chinese products, 67 per cent reduced their purchases from the year before.

The Department of Consumer Affairs via the Packaged Commodity Rules Amendment, 2017 brought e-commerce under the ambit of legal metrology, which required firms operating in this space to display key information on packaged products like MRP, best before date, country of origin, net contents, etc. on their sites.

Twenty-nine per cent of the consumers surveyed say e-commerce sellers are now making country of origin information available on products.

The next question in the survey asked consumers about what information they generally look for when buying a product from an e-commerce platform. Five per cent said, “price and delivery date” and 22 per cent said “price, delivery Date, rating & reviews.” Breaking down the poll, 13 per cent said “price, MRP, discount, delivery date and best before date”, nine per cent said “price, MRP, discount, delivery date, ratings & reviews, best before date” and 51 per cent said “price, MRP, discount, delivery date, rating & reviews, best before date and country of origin.” This question in the survey received 9,381 responses. Overall, 51 per cent of consumers said that they are now looking for country of origin information when they shop online.

Overall, it has been nearly two years after the government asked e-commerce platforms to comply with on the call to display the country of origin. Further analysis of complaints shows that most of the older, established platforms are now compliant and giving this field to sellers. However, a few newer platforms are still non-compliant.

On the seller front, a lot more work needs to be done, as only 29 per cent of the consumers said that most sellers were displaying this information for all products. The need of the hour is for e-commerce platforms to ensure sellers are complying, and those that don’t, face action beyond that taken by the government.

If both the government and e-commerce platforms do their bit, the country of origin compliance will improve quickly and the biggest beneficiaries will be the platforms as they will enjoy higher consumer trust and greater volume of business.

Survey demographics

The survey received over 19,000 responses from consumers from 309 districts of India. Sixty-six per cent of the respondents were men and 34 per cent were women. Forty-nine per cent were from tier=1, 32 per cent from tier-2 and 19 per cent of the respondents were from tier-3, 4 and rural districts. The study was conducted via the LocalCircles platform and all participants were validated citizens who had to be registered with LocalCircles to join this survey.