LinkedIn Article | Jewellery Retail | Digital Consumer Behaviour | Omnichannel Retail
Dr. Priyank Bhanshali
Managing Director, Ratnam Jewellery | Real Estate Investor | July 2026
Running a jewellery business in 2026 is genuinely different from running one ten years ago. Not in every dimension – the craftsmanship still matters, the trust still matters, the occasion still drives the purchase. But the journey a customer takes before they walk into the showroom, and sometimes instead of walking into the showroom, has transformed in ways that demand a strategic response from every jewellery retailer in India.
At Ratnam Jewellery, we have observed this transformation directly. And I want to share what I have seen, because I think the industry needs to have an honest conversation about what Digital India has done to our customers – not what we wish it had done, but what it has actually done.
THE RESEARCH-FIRST BUYER IS NOW THE DEFAULT
Before a customer walks into a jewellery showroom today, they have already done significant research. They have browsed Instagram. They have compared designs across multiple brands on social media. They have looked at reviews on Google. They may have used a virtual try-on tool on a competitor’s website. They have formed an opinion about price ranges. They understand, at least approximately, what hallmarking means and why it matters. They may have already shortlisted three or four designs.
This customer is not uninformed. They are in many cases better informed than some of our in-store staff. And they expect the showroom experience to add value on top of their research – not to substitute for it. If a customer has done three hours of digital research and walks into a showroom where the salesperson cannot add meaningfully to what they already know, that customer leaves. And increasingly, they order from a brand that can serve them without requiring them to leave the house.
The India gems and jewellery market research from IMARC Group confirms this: web sales for jewellery are booming, especially among consumers between 18 and 45 years, who account for 70 to 80 percent of digital purchases. The average online jewellery ticket size in India is between Rs 25,000 and Rs 30,000. These are real purchases, not browsing. The customer has made a financial and emotional decision entirely without a physical store visit.
THE OMNICHANNEL IMPERATIVE – NOT A CHOICE, A SURVIVAL REQUIREMENT
The research is unambiguous on this point. Retailers that have successfully adopted an omnichannel sales strategy capture 30 percent more of consumer spending than single-channel operators. Brands offering personalised jewellery experiences report customer lifetime value that is up to 40 percent higher than those with standardized collections. The implementation of augmented reality virtual try-on has demonstrably reduced product return rates by over 25 percent.
These are not marginal advantages. They are structural. And the jewellery brands that are winning in 2026 – Tanishq, BlueStone, Kalyan with its digital infrastructure – have all figured this out. BlueStone reported a 48 percent year-on-year revenue increase in Q4 FY26, moving from a quarterly loss of Rs 51 crore to a quarterly profit of Rs 31 crore. That is a business that has built its entire model around the research-first, digital-discovery, in-store-validation customer journey that I am describing.
The customer now expects to be able to browse online, shortlist, and then visit a showroom where the staff already know what they are looking at because their digital journey has been captured. They expect seamless payment – UPI, EMI, card, everything. They expect to be able to get post-purchase service through WhatsApp or an app rather than making a dedicated trip. And increasingly, they expect to be able to share their purchase on social media and have it feel like an experience worth sharing.
WHAT DIGITAL INDIA HAS DONE TO PRICING TRANSPARENCY
This is the part of the conversation that is most uncomfortable for some traditional jewellers – and the most important. Digital India has made pricing in jewellery significantly more transparent. The customer who walks into your showroom today has already checked gold rates on three platforms this morning. They know that the making charge on a particular design type typically runs between X and Y percent. They have compared your exchange rates against three competitors. They know what they should be paying, and they are not afraid to ask for it.
This is not adversarial. This is market efficiency at work. And it is actually good for jewellers who compete on quality, craftsmanship, trust, and service – because those are the dimensions that a digital search cannot fully capture. What digital transparency has squeezed is the margin available to jewellers who relied on customer ignorance as a business model. That margin was always unjustified, and its compression is not a loss. It is a correction.
The organised retailers achieving over 95 percent compliance in hallmarking, the QR code-linked product traceability systems that allow customers to verify origin and purity on their phones, the transparent making charge disclosures that FSSAI and the government have been pushing – all of these are responses to a customer base that will no longer accept opacity as a feature of the buying experience.
THE GENERATIONAL SHIFT IN PURCHASE MOTIVATION
Perhaps the most structurally significant change I have observed is in why younger customers buy gold jewellery, not just how. Research published in IJVRA in March 2026 documents what we have been seeing in our own customer data: millennials and Gen Z jewellery buyers are motivated by different criteria than the generations before them.
They buy lighter, more wearable pieces rather than heavy statement jewellery. They prefer contemporary designs over traditional forms, but they still want connection to Indian craft heritage – they just want it expressed differently. They think about jewellery as a daily accessory and lifestyle expression, not only as a wedding or festival reserve. They switch brands more readily because brand loyalty is earned continuously through experience, not once through a family relationship.
EMI schemes, exchange programs, and digital payment options have expanded purchase frequency. A customer who might previously have bought heavy jewellery twice in their lifetime for weddings is now buying three or four lighter pieces per year for personal wear, travel, and social occasions. The total lifetime value of this customer to a jeweller who can serve them well across all these occasions is very high – but only if the jeweller can make the ongoing experience as compelling as the initial purchase.
WHERE TRADITIONAL JEWELLERS HAVE AN ADVANTAGE – AND MUST PROTECT IT
There is one dimension of jewellery retail that digital cannot replicate: the emotional weight of a significant purchase. Buying the necklace for your daughter’s wedding, choosing the earrings for your mother’s anniversary, selecting the first substantial jewellery purchase for a young professional – these are high-stakes, emotionally loaded decisions that customers still want to make in a physical environment with a trusted relationship.
This is where traditional jewellers who have built three or four generations of customer relationships have a durable advantage – if they protect it. The trust relationship that a family jeweller holds with their long-term customers is genuinely difficult for a digital brand to acquire. The mistake is letting that trust become complacency. Customers who trust you will still leave if the digital experience does not meet their expectations, if your designs do not evolve, or if your pricing lacks transparency.
The jeweller who wins the next decade is the one who takes the trust that traditional retail earned and delivers it through the experience that digital customers now expect. Tradition alone is not enough. Digital capability alone is not enough. The combination is everything.
At Ratnam Jewellery, navigating this evolution is something I think about every day. The customer has changed. The market has changed. The question is whether we change with intention and intelligence, or whether we wait until the market changes for us. I believe in the former.
Disclaimer: Views are personal.