Nigerians on an online shopping spree!

By Atim Nkese Nkpubre

The handshake between business and technology is a welcome development and actually just got a lot more interesting, especially with online shopping. And judging by the way it has caught on like a wild bush fire, it would appear that online shopping has come to stay in Nigeria, for real!
On a regular basis, many are turning to the internet to order their needs and the adult toys on their wish lists, and at their convenience, too. The busy and not-so-very-busy have come to find succour in online shopping marts, if only for the fun of it. Interesting times are here again!
Juliet is a banker. For the past decade or thereabout, she has cultivated the habit of an early bird, often resuming at work at 7.30am and sometimes, working late into the night. And because she handles the upper echelon of the customer base of her bank, Juliet often holds meetings on weekends too, leaving her with very little or no time at all to attend to her personal and shopping needs. As she disclosed to The Communicat, Juliet has come to depend greatly on the various online shopping facilities that now operate in Nigeria, aside from the nanny and sundry other domestic workers that help her outs on the home front.

“Shopping online is so convenient for me, I rely on the emarts for cereals, grains, personal care and even my everyday fashion items, she said. Their delivery service takes a lot of stress off me and I could do with the time. The operators are okay and are beginning to get it right, especially in the area of timely delivery of items”.
Juliet is not alone in her shopping preference as a number of Nigerians have joined the online shopping spree and for the right reasons, too. A few of the online retail outlets we checked out such as JUMIA, Konga, Emart and Shop Nigeria offer items ranging from fashion items to top selling mobile phones, computing products and tablets, cameras, electronic products, home and living products, books, baby items, toys and kids products, health and beauty products watches and accessories and, you name it... And like you may have guessed, all of the outlets pride themselves on being the number one shopping outlet. In Nigeria, everyone appears to be a market leader of some sort, except, perhaps, in the telecommunication sector where the operators know how they rank and where they actually belong. No one plays second fiddle here, mark you, or number three for that matter. Don’t even go there, please.

 

However, JUMIA and Konga clearly stand out of the crowd in terms of size, customer service, and brand awareness, leading to instant name recall among customers. It is therefore not a surprise that in so short a while, “JUMIA has become the number one online retail store for Nigerians to access with ease and shop for just about anything ranging from home appliances to clothing”.
Konga.com prides itself in not just being an online store but in its customer service. This much was attested to by Arit Nkpubre, a Lagos-based maritime lawyer. “Actually, I have used Konga twice to purchase some books. Their service is okay in the sense that they delivered on time”. The outlets, all seem to have made their processes as simple as possible for the unique business environment they are operating in with payment options that suits the different categories of their customer base.   A few of their unique selling propositions include free nationwide delivery, payment on delivery, flexible payment options and a 7-day return policy. It would appear that life just got a lot easier.
The new phenomenon is also creeping steadily into conversations, too. People sometimes, use it to compare notes as well as gauge where others rank on the new media ladder, and could rightly become a status symbol in no time. Nowadays, youngsters are often heard asking friends: “so which is your favourite online shop? And woe betides you, should you mention Balogun market or even Tejuosho!  Hello, what cloud do you live on? Balogun is not online yet! This type of “inappropriateness” and wrong balancing act has earned some youngsters the appellation of “old school” whilst still in their prime, as they are considered out of touch with trends.
What’s more, the World Wide Web operates twenty-four hours of the day and seven days a week and affords online retail outlets and their teeming customers the opportunity to perform business transactions even in their sleep. Well, not really, I was just kidding. But the prevailing scenario could be likened to shopping while you sleep and for business owners, certainly, making money while fast asleep.
I want you to, please, flash back to the ‘dark ages’ before the advent of the GSM technology, which by the way is just about a dozen years old. Who would have believed that we would be shopping online in Nigeria so soon with so much finesse and sophistication? Advances in telecommunications and related services have opened up a world of new possibilities and fresh streams of income to business operators. Apart from the global access that the internet confers and the opportunity to manage one’s business from anywhere in the world, even while on the road, experts believe that, online business is a powerful, fast and efficient marketing and communication tool and medium that requires minimal start-up time and investment. Lovers of the environment believe online is the way of the future as it is the most environmentally friendly mode of doing business without the clutter of papers.
Aside from the teething problems of delay in delivery time, payment and customer support, perhaps, patrons of the online shopping outlets say they are satisfied and that the outlook is not too bad for a young and growing industry.
The history of online shopping is quite fascinating. Online shopping was said to have been invented in the UK in 1979 on a two-pronged model of business to business (B2B) and business to customer (B2C). These were sold in the UK in the 1980s.  The largest
B2B was probably Ford's Locate a Car system that operated in many European
countries. The cleverest B2B was probably Nissan who sold Finance with online
agency credit checks. The first B2C was Tesco. These systems were pre-internet
pre-windows but otherwise fully functional. In the 1990s these systems migrated to the internet and WWW and became fully featured, fast and secure making the pioneer systems look very ancient indeed.
Well, the experiment of the late seventies and eighties has metamorphosed into a specialised mode of doing business. E-commerce has completely changed the way we buy, nowadays, without a doubt. The privacy and convenience it offers imply that this business model will continue to survive and thrive into the future. Furthermore, several other businesses, other than the online retail outlets, now use the internet in one form or the other to communicate with their customers as well as get the necessary feedback on their business to enable them arrive at the way forward.  With the way e-commerce is going in Nigeria, an online presence has become an absolute must for businesses. So, if your customers can’t find you online, you’re obviously at a disadvantage and you really cannot afford that or can you? We’d be happy to share your online shopping experience. Have a great week, folks! God bless Nigeria.