Top e-commerce articles on Stears Business

From the convenience of one-click purchases to faster delivery times, shopping online has increasingly become a common practice among many people in the world. 

Nearly one-third of the world’s population has embraced e-commerce. According to Statista data, the number of online shoppers in Nigeria increased by 44% to 77 million people, up from 53 million between 2017 and 2019. 

But despite the advantages of e-commerce, it is not without its challenges. In Nigeria, many businesses struggle to combat the online and offline elements that make digital or online businesses thrive. Just think of bad infrastructure or poor postage and an incomplete address system that businesses continue to face. 

And then you have a trust deficit among Nigerians that hampers the online paying model leading to another world of complications with cash payments. 

Still, with the growth in the industry, e-commerce has come to stay. If you’ve made that online purchase, reading through our compilation today would help you understand the challenges and benefits of the online shopping world a lot more. And if you are about to take that business of yours online, this is one list of stories you don’t want to miss reading.

We start with food—an essential item for most Nigerians. Almost 60% of our total household expenditure went to food in 2019, that’s probably why it is a commodity that is usually top of mind on this side of the world.

 

1. What is the case for food delivery apps in Nigeria

 

 

When it comes to online shopping, groceries, shoes, clothing items and other basic essentials immediately come to mind as things you can buy. The way we shop has changed, and with the entry of food delivery apps, the way we eat is changing as well. 

However, there are economic realities that players in this space have to face. While businesses might want to take the convenience of food delivery apps as an indicator for market success, a key point to remember is that substitutes still exist. This story shows how food delivery apps measure up to the other options consumers have at their disposal when it’s mealtime.

Read the full article here

 

2. How social selling will expand e-commerce in Nigeria

 

 

Companies as old as Jumia and Konga are arguably the pioneers of e-commerce in Nigeria. But the ability to produce success similar to their counterparts in the West remains a challenge. People believe that the small fraction of Nigerians who have the tech-savviness and the purchasing power to buy things online contribute to these firms’ struggles. Then there is the issue around the low-trust society to contend with as well.

Yet, these struggles aside, we see a different brand of online commerce spreading quickly across Nigeria. Individual vendors are marketing and selling their products through social media channels such as Instagram, WhatsApp and even Twitter. In this story, you will see the evolution in online commerce and its promise to redefine buying and selling in Nigeria and across the world.

Read the full article here

 

3. E-commerce in Nigeria: The offline story of tricky logistics

 

 

In this story, you get to see and understand a more crucial side of e-commerce—logistics. For business owners, first is the issue of getting your goods from a country that is not yours, and then dispatching it to different areas within and outside your country. Then you have your customers who are enticed with freebies and less than a day delivery. How do e-commerce businesses manage to stay afloat and run profitable businesses? There is also the issue of a low standard address system in the country. How do your dispatchers figure out where to make deliveries to? 

This has been the bane of many e-commerce businesses struggling to make a profit in Nigeria. However, amidst the challenges, innovative solutions abound and this article explains them all.  

Read the full article here

 

4. Using e-commerce to improve margins for informal retail shops

 

 

When it comes to retail shops (like the kiosk at your estate’s gate) you hardly realise how moving the goods being sold can be big business. Getting in on the action and making life easy for businesses and shop owners in this space is a startup known as Trade Depot. Wondering what disruptive innovation in local logistics might look like?

Read the full piece here

 

5. Jumia in a pandemic: A performance review

 

 

Earlier we mentioned how companies like Jumia and Konga struggle with profit acquisition and customer retention. This story tells us more about Jumia’s performance in 2020. We get a deep look into the company’s business segment, new trends brought about by a pandemic-ridden year and the wider struggles that abound in the sector. The insights are not like any you will find anywhere else.

Read the full piece here

 

6. The many pitfalls of e-commerce in Nigeria

 

 

Again e-commerce in Nigeria is a growing force. As we’ve seen, it can be applied to practically any trade, from cooked meals to quick household goods from your gate-side kiosk. This is even more evident when we compare the potential numbers of users to other African peers. With more than half of Nigeria’s population having access to the internet and a mobile phone, the 100 million figure is still more than the entire market in countries like South Africa or Kenya. 

However, this free to read piece from 2018 discusses some factors that make such potential difficult to achieve. From the poverty rate to the poor logistics, here is a quick breakdown of downsides you should know before going into the e-commerce space. 

Read the full piece here [Free to Read]

 

7. Cracking Nigeria’s billion-dollar online marketplace

 

 

As simple as the term online shopping or e-commerce might sound, there are so many diverse angles to it. There are the social selling dynamics through WhatsApp or Twitter that we discussed earlier, then there are social integrations and payment dynamics. The topics are endless. However, in our 7th story, we address one—classifieds. What are classifieds? What is their operational model in Nigeria? Why are there different types of models? 

In this piece, we help you understand online businesses in more depth, and show you how the failure of some models led to the appeal for more specialised models.

Read the full article here

 

8. Nigeria and its growing gifting sector

 

 

This story digs into growing trends in the gifting industry and peruses how corporate gifting has dominated Nigeria’s gratitude culture.  Although hardly an e-commerce focused piece per se, this story shows how e-commerce platforms are also boosting personal gifting. For example, Paystack allows customers to mark an order as a gift and sends a delivery notification to the beneficiary once the order is paid on its e-commerce store for small businesses.

You can learn more by reading this breakdown of the new strategies embraced by entrepreneurs to open up Nigeria’s potential multi-billion-dollar gifting industry.

Read the full piece here

 

9.  A tasty trillion: Nigeria’s attractive food delivery business

 

 

We started this compilation by breaking down the business case for food delivery apps, and as we near the end, this story looks at why food delivery apps or aggregators exist in the first place. One pivotal point in the life of many of these existing businesses was the Lagos bike-hailing ban last year February. After the ban, many bike operators shifted gear into food delivery. 

So what does the future hold for players? This story assesses the major players in the trillion naira industry, the different business models, and the revenue streams with the most feasible margins.

Read the full story here

 

10. Nigerian companies go online for survival

 

 

To close our compilation for this week is a story that takes us to the point where the place of technology in business was crystallised. With the arrival of the pandemic, fashion runways were held online, art exhibitions and every physical experience we had come to know and enjoy found its way into the virtual world. For Nigerian firms, one major enabler has been the number of internet users which has grown from 28 million in 2012 to 126 million—the sixth-largest in the world. 

So while lockdowns provoked many businesses to take on the online route for survival, this story shows how e-commerce is also helping many businesses break even and survive even while the pandemic-induced storm is refusing to end.

Read the full piece here

 

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