Industry expertise

E-commerce & Quick Commerce market research in India

Research on online shoppers, sellers and delivery experience.

Quick answer

Market Research India is a specialist e-commerce & quick commerce research consultancy in India. We interview online shoppers, sellers, delivery partners in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Odia and English, with field teams in 50 cities and 4 methods matched to how this sector actually buys.

Proposal in 24 hours
Scoped, itemised and fixed-fee.
50 cities, 14 languages
Our own supervised field teams.
Senior-led, NDA-first
A research director on every project.

2,400+

Projects delivered

Cities with field teams

Industries covered

Indian languages

The decisions we help you make

Indian e-commerce has split into two behaviours: the considered purchase that still takes days of comparison, and the ten-minute replenishment that takes no thought at all. Loyalty means something completely different in each, and so does a price test.

What keeps shoppers loyal to an app?
How do Tier 2 users shop online?
What do sellers need from marketplaces?
What stops a shopper opening a competitor's app first — price, delivery promise, or returns?
Which seller frictions are costing you selection in the categories you most need?

Each of these is a decision with a cost attached, which is why we design backwards from them rather than forwards from a questionnaire.

Who we talk to, and how we reach them

Who you talk to decides what the study can conclude. We treat each audience as a separate recruitment problem rather than as quotas in one sample.

Online shoppers
Recruited from verified panels with behavioural screening on platform repertoire, order frequency and city class, with Tier 2 and first-time online buyers deliberately boosted.
Sellers
Sampled from marketplace seller directories and category associations, screened on GMV band, categories listed and the number of platforms they sell on.
Delivery partners
Recruited at hub level with the operator's permission or independently through gig-worker networks, paid for their time and interviewed outside shift hours.

Interviews run in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Odia and English, with every questionnaire translated and back-translated before fieldwork. Moderators and interviewers are briefed on the e-commerce & quick commerce category itself, not handed a script — which is the difference between a respondent answering politely and a respondent explaining themselves.

Methods that fit this sector

Method should follow the market, not the other way round. These are the approaches that fit how this sector actually behaves.

What a typical study looks like

A realistic shape for a first study in this sector. Your brief will move the numbers; it rarely moves them by an order of magnitude.

Indicative scope — e-commerce & quick commerce study

Typical sample: n=2,000 online shoppers spanning metro and Tier 2, 150 seller interviews and 30 delivery-partner depths
Who we interview: Online shoppers, Sellers, Delivery partners — each recruited against a separate screener rather than drawn from one general sample.
Core methods: Online Surveys, Usage & Attitude Studies, Customer Satisfaction & NPS, Ethnographic Research
Fieldwork window: 3–4 weeks
Standard deliverables: Real-time dashboards, Cross-tabs, Executive summary, Category map
Signature output: An app-repertoire and switching model with each friction costed by order value
Lead time: 6–8 weeks from sign-off to debrief

Compliance, ethics and data quality

Research in this sector carries obligations that a generic fieldwork house will not have thought about. These are the ones we build into the protocol before the first interview is scheduled.

Platform data stays yours
Order or seller data shared for sampling moves under a data-processing agreement, is used only to draw the sample and never appears in a report.
Delivery partners paid and protected
Gig-worker interviews are compensated, scheduled off-shift, and reported so that no individual can be identified by route or hub.
No experiments on live customers
Pricing and offer stimulus is tested in a research environment; we never expose real shoppers to a manipulated checkout to see what happens.
Verification you can audit
Every online shopper and delivery partner we count is screened against a written definition, de-duplicated, GPS- and timestamp-logged in the field, and re-contacted on a 10% back-check with 10% of audio audited by a supervisor who did not run the interview.

What we will not do on a e-commerce & quick commerce study

We will not substitute an audience without telling you, quietly loosen a screener to hit a quota, interview anyone who has not understood what they are consenting to, or move identifiable personal data outside India without your written agreement. If the fieldwork cannot be done properly, we say so at proposal stage rather than at debrief.

How we work

Our research process

01
Discovery
We turn your business question into clear research objectives.
02
Design
Sampling, method, questionnaire and discussion guides, translated into local languages.
03
Fieldwork
Supervised field teams with GPS, audio and back-check quality control.
04
Analysis
Statistical and thematic analysis by senior researchers.
05
Insight
Board-ready reports, dashboards and workshops with clear recommendations.

Where the sector concentrates

The Indian cities that matter most for e-commerce & quick commerce

E-commerce & quick commerce is concentrated rather than spread: one city carries most of the sector's weight, so we start there and add the metros that supply the rest of the demand. Each page covers e-commerce & quick commerce research in that city specifically.

Before you brief us

Frequently asked questions

What does a e-commerce & quick commerce research project cost in India?

Cost follows the sample, the seniority of the audience and the number of cities. Reaching online shoppers costs a fraction of what it costs to reach delivery partners, so the audience mix moves the number far more than the headline interview count. Send a brief and you get a fixed-fee proposal within 24 hours.

Which cities should a e-commerce & quick commerce study cover?

Start where the sector concentrates — Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Chennai, Hyderabad — then add markets that match your distribution rather than the national map. Most clients run four to eight cities so results can be compared side by side.

How do you make sure respondents are genuinely sellers?

Each audience has its own written screener and its own frame. Respondents are de-duplicated against past projects, fieldwork is GPS- and timestamp-logged, 10% are re-contacted on a back-check and 10% of audio is audited by a supervisor who did not conduct the interview.

How long does a e-commerce & quick commerce study take?

Fieldwork of the scope described above runs 3–4 weeks, and the whole project is typically 6–8 weeks from sign-off to debrief. Fieldwork usually begins five to seven working days after sign-off, once screeners and translations are approved.

Which methods suit e-commerce & quick commerce research best?

For this sector we most often use online surveys, usage & attitude studies, customer satisfaction & nps, ethnographic research. The right combination depends on whether you need to size something, explain it or test it — a brief that names the decision gets a sharper design than one that names a method.

What safeguards apply to e-commerce & quick commerce fieldwork?

Order or seller data shared for sampling moves under a data-processing agreement, is used only to draw the sample and never appears in a report. Alongside that, all personal data is collected on informed consent, held in India, pseudonymised before analysis and deleted on an agreed schedule, in line with the DPDP Act, 2023 and the ESOMAR code.

Sector at a glance

Hub cities: 1
Audiences covered: 3
Fieldwork window: 3–4 weeks
Lead time: 6–8 weeks
Proposal: Within 24 hours

See related case studies

Keep exploring

E-commerce & Quick Commerce research, city by city and method by method

Fifty cities, twenty methods and the sectors that sit closest to e-commerce & quick commerce. Each page is written for that specific combination of market and approach.

Tier 1 metros

Full-scale quantitative fieldwork, viewing-facility groups and senior e-commerce & quick commerce interviews in the eight largest markets.

Tier 2 growth markets

Forty-two cities where e-commerce & quick commerce demand is forming fastest, each covered by a supervised local field team.

Show 34 more

By research method

Every one of our twenty methods, written for the e-commerce & quick commerce audience rather than in general.

Show 12 more

Sectors that sit next to this one

These most often appear in the same programme as a e-commerce & quick commerce study, either as an adjacent market or a shared audience.

All other industries

The rest of the thirty sectors we hold dedicated field and analysis experience in.

Show 17 more

Next step

Make your next e-commerce & quick commerce decision with evidence.