Nigeria falls behind South Africa in 2017 black Friday shopping
Nigerians shopped less online compared to South Africa on black Friday, an American Thanksgiving inspired discount shopping spree according to a recent survey carried out by Picodi.com an online retail tracker.
The survey which covers consumer activity across 27 countries in the world including Nigeria and South Africa, said though the black Friday helped increase consumer activity in the country online, the number of daily transaction for 2017 which increased by 1342 percent compared to every other day fell short of the 3033 percent in 2016.
South Africa’s daily transaction sales was also adjudged the most impressive in the world put at 16.226 percent with Nigeria coming in 5th behind Greece, Pakistan Mexico who came in 2nd, 3rd and 4th respectively.
An average value of Nigerian cart reached N27,264, which is more by N13,752 comparing year to year (N13,780).
Nigeria consumers enjoyed a greater percentage of discounts with an average discount percentage during Black Friday reaching 55 percent meaning Nigerians saved an average of N21,743 cumulatively.
The most popular categories this year were Fashion, Electronics, and Cosmetics. When it comes to the most popular shops Jumia, Slot and Payporte took the three top spots.
In terms of devices used for online shopping most of Nigerians preferred smartphones 68 percent over desktop computers and laptops 27 percent. Tablets were used by 5 percent of shoppers.
GeoPoll in a similar survey last year revealed that 66 percent of Nigerians buy items online every few months compared with 60 percent in South Africa and 45 per cent in Kenya.
Among the top reasons cited for not frequently using online shopping sites were lack of trust, shipping costs, unsupported payment methods, or because a friend had a bad experience.
The GeoPoll revealed that many complained of unreliability of some sites, poor delivery and the purchase process. Others felt that there is no need for online purchases as the items were readily available at their local store.
The majority of shoppers in Nigeria paid on delivery for items bought online. Shola Adekoya, Konga Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in mid-November announced that customers will now have to pre-pay on the platform as a result of increasing number of cancellation of order.
In a statement made available to BusinessDay, Adekoya noted that since the switchover, that the company has experienced a solid shift towards online payment by customers.
Providing further explanation on the decision, Adekoya said: “In recent years, we have explored several solutions for payment and e-commerce in Nigeria and concluded that prepay is the necessary approach for our business and the market.
This move corroborates a recent survey carried out by Boston Consulting Group which found only 16 percent online shoppers end up buying on the Net after checking out a product.
According to the survey over 70 per cent of the over 90-million-strong online shoppers are influenced by the information they glean from the Net, only 16 per cent of them actually end up buying online.
For most products and services, consumers mostly those in urban centres, are doing the research online and buy offline, according to the report, which surveyed 600 urban consumers who are active Internet users.
DAVID IBEMERE