Shopping Online In Nigeria; The Bad, The Bad The "Not So Bad"

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Jumia and Konga leads black Friday sales promotion in Nigeria. I have already written in a previous blog that sales promotion is a short term inducement for quicker sales. However in this post I want to talk about how black Friday seems to benefit either of Jumia or Konga rather than their customers. About 5 months ago I started buying things from Jumia and Konga and this was because of the pandemic, the Lockdown made it difficult for physical trade or open market transaction. If you notice that during when the lockdown was effective things like zoom and facetime as well as WhatsApp got a lot of traction, this was because this was how people could do business, relate with their families and on the other hand Jumia was a way to buy without really having to go to a physical market.

So Jumia and Konga took advantage of the lockdown to thrive their business and even now that the lockdown has been eased/lifted they still have people swarming to their websites to shop online and for a long time they may enjoy this economic of scale. I however have problems with companies like Jumia and this is the fact that they sell fake promises on their promotional social media pages which allows their pages generate huge traffic more than it would on a normal day. For their black Friday they promised free shipping for most product, they never gifted any free shipping and the worse of all is that if you ordered the global version of a good, you're likely to be hit with the most ridiculous charges ever, imagine paying $40$ shipping fee Just for a good of $10. I know that location can mostly matter.

But then there's s way this things can be handled for example if 10 people are let's say ordering round neck polo from let's say China and it might take 6 weeks to deliver, it's even better if the order of various people are combined so that they don't have to individually pay custom fees and pay shipping fee again.

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This isn't only the phenomenon, for example Jumia doesn't have the characteristics of a traditional market and this makes it difficult to segment the market for all kinds of buyers especially for different kind of earners. On a regular rate the price of a product on Jumia is sold the same for all kinds of buyers which makes it rather difficult for average income earners to enjoy online shopping, which can be easier and better but who says can't ve cheaper? Money is the major determinant when buying before comfortability or any other thing. So the outrageous prices through which goods can be inflated on Jumia makes it difficult for you to know a quality product because you can only see what you're ordering you don't have the opportunity to see if it's quality or not.

Both poor quality products and quality products are put on sales and most times Jumia return policy pisses you off so much that you'd rather stick with a poor product rather than going through the process of returning a poor product. Now apart from comfortability of ordering a good or service from the comfort of your bedroom or buying a really scarce commodity there's no other advantage to using Jumia or Konga and honestly this is truth. I've bought a lot of Jumia and the prices are so outrageous and yet the product quality are very poor and substandard probably because I didn't have the one chance of testing the durability by feeling it or testing it out in a first usage like I usually would do in a second hand graded market.

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Bottom line is, shopping online in Nigeria has more disadvantages than advantages and this is from the point of view of a consumer who wants to buy quality for the little amount of money they have. I know we have different sellers online but then a place like jiji seems better where you can call the seller, have then negotiate a price but then the prices in Jumia are inflated and non negotiable. A Samsung M31 in a regular convenient store is about 112, 000 naira but then it's like 120,000 in Jumia without shipping fees added. The market isn't segmented and the monopoly of being the only tier to determine price is unhealthy. There should be the choice for price negotiation in a market it gives the consumer a sort of a leverage.

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Food Photography (Some Amazing Nigerian Delicacy)

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The Narratives & Complexities That Arises When We Look At The Cause Of Failure & Rejection

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My name is @Josediccus, a young Nigerian student who is a Vlogger, A Psychologist, Poet And Sports Writer/Analyst. I'm using my contents as a process to create shared meaning as well as create expressions through which people on/off hive can relate. I believe content is a process to be enjoyed and relished and I'm up for any collaborations in my field stated above. Cheers

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@Josediccus, your brother-in-pen & heart

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I'm hoping to reach more people who are broken at heart and spirit, so share on any platform or reblog

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