Festive Season Sale 2023: Spending on cars, smartphones, TVs and other luxury items rise

Festive Sale 2023: The first phase of festive sale which runs from Navaratri to Dussehra saw a flying start as consumer spending on big ticket items like cars, smartphones and TVs increased. Economic Times quoted several industry experts and mentioned that several brands and categories have overtaken last year's total festive period sales or are close to matching them in the first phase.

Consumer Sentiment Revival

While the first phase accounts for 40-50% of total festive sales, the second phase starts a week before Diwali. As per Economic Times, this surge reflects a revival in consumer sentiment, which has been subdued for over a year.

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Even though e-commerce markets started their festive sale earlier than usual during the shraadh period, this did not affect the offline stores. These stores picked up business during the Navratri Dussehra period.

Car Sales

The adequate supply of cars has hugely helped the sector in the first phase of festive season. As per Economic Times, car sales have grown nearly 16% thus far this month from October last year, while that of two-wheelers is up 20%, indicating a recovery in demand.

The report further mentions that better stock levels at dealerships and healthy demand are spurring vehicle sales on an already high base, said industry insiders. As many as 1.57 million two-wheelers and 328,000 passenger vehicles were sold in October 2022.

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Maruti's senior executive officer Shashank Srivastava told Economic Times that over 1,00,000 cars were delivered in the nine-day Navratri period while the industry is estimated to have delivered 2,20,000 units in the same period.

Meanwhile, Hyundai Motor India's Chief Operating Officer Tarun Garg told the publication that it saw dealerships deliver 30,000 cars during the Navratri-Dussehra period.

"This is consistent with year-to-date growth so far," Garg told Economic Times. "Exter, Venue and Creta continue to receive overwhelming customer response."

Keeping in view the upcoming Dhanteras and Diwali festivals, the inventory level at Hyundai dealers is at 20-25 days. Though the two-wheeler sales is not in par with the passenger car sales, they still are doing good.

Smartphone and TV sales

Mobile phone market tracker Counterpoint Research estimates smartphone sales volumes have already grown 4-5% this month from the year earlier. Its research director Tarun Pathak has mentioned that the market has expanded by over 20% in value.

Meanwhile Television makers have mentioned that there is a shortage of large-screen models of 65 inches and above. Gireesan Gopi of LG told Economic Times that the firm is arranging for resh stock of large-screen televisions on a war footing as the combination of festive season and cricket world cup boosted sales beyond expectations.