Service Issues Affecting Consumer Behaviour Towards E-commerce Purchases in India

Globally, e-commerce is growing at an exponential rate. Several push factors, such as the growing middle class, tech-savvy young generation, increasing smartphone and Internet penetration, have contributed to this exponential growth, but there are several service issues that may adversely affect the purchasing behaviour of consumers on online platforms. These include delivery of items to consumers at the time of his/her choice, return pick-up of items delivered but not acceptable to the consumer, ease of payment and credit back in case of return of items, post-delivery warranty commitments, consumer grievance redressal in case of defective products, to name a few. This chapter analyses such consumer issues in e-commerce transactions and highlights the consumer protection regulations adopted in India, and broadly compares it with the systems in the developed economies. These issues may not only have microeconomic consequences by affecting the sales and profitability of online vendors but may pose macroeconomic challenges by slowing down the growth of the e-commerce sector in the respective countries unless otherwise addressed on time.