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E-commerce in Nigeria: The offline story of tricky logistics
Jul 8, 2020
When it comes to shopping patterns, there are periods where the old buying habits of consumers are in flux, and new ones evolve. These phases are golden for retailers.
A few years ago, a statistician at Target , an American retailer, realised that one of those key moments is around the birth of a child. Parents are exhausted and are willing to change shopping patterns while adapting to their new lives.
Other similar moments include marriage and honeymoons when couples are willing to spend disproportionately more, as well as tragic events like deaths, where families spare no expense to lay loved ones to rest.
Now, pandemics have joined this list. As Brian Dumaine of the Fortune magazine puts it, if anyone were designing a company from scratch that could capitalise on a global crisis, it would probably be an e-commerce giant like Amazon.
In 2014 when the fear of an Ebola outbreak was at an all-time high, online retailers won. The Economist reported that despite poor transport infrastructure, weak technology solutions and a strong distrust of online payments, online retailers in Nigeria boomed.
That year, Jumia saw its orders triple as a result of the outbreak, due to demand for hygiene products like hand-wash, bleach and other cleaning products.
These tales are not too surprising considering recent episodes of hand-wash scarcity in Lagos and hoarding of toiletries like tissue paper.
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