The government hurriedly changed its decision to allow the e-commerce platforms to resume selling all goods with effect from April 20. LocalCircles has conducted a survey to find out what people want to buy if the ban had been lifted and they could order what they wanted online. The survey results indicate that people would want to buy air conditioners, coolers, school and office supplies and so on. Schools generally reopen after the summer vacations and parents would want to order stuff if they are able to grab good offers online.

Many people said they would want to buy gadgets too, like mobile phones, laptops and printers, if the government permitted them to. Though the categories are further split, when put together, these items constitute 55% of the responses in the survey. The only items allowed to be sold by the government are fans and books. These can be purchased from offline stores as well. Since fans are generally stocked and sold by electrical stores, one can expect that these stores will start operating. The question will still remain that the employees in these stores cannot travel from their homes to the shops and back since no public transport is available. Either the owners will have to manage the shops or make arrangements for the employees to stay closer to their shops.

Coming back to the survey, some 8,600 persons were asked the questions on their purchase preferences by the survey team. A total of 33% said they would want to buy a gadget; the list includes laptops, tablets, smartphones and printer etc. Those who were looking for school and office supplies formed 43% of those surveyed.

The e-commerce sites too seem to have observed from their own internal software to track what items customers were searching for these were the items taking precedence over the others.

The Amazons and Flipkarts will now be hoping that after May 3 at least, the government will agree to open up the business for all these items, essential or non-essential, in the government’s view.