Retailers must also get over their trust issues. FILE PHOTO | NMG
If you notice your colleagues dressing above their pay grade
blame it on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, known for its
surge in retail activity and commonly thought of as the beginning of the
Christmas season.
Originating in the US where
excessive consumerism is the norm, the idea has surfaced in Kenya with
retailers intending to leverage on growing disposable incomes and access
to credit.
So much so that online retailer Jumia has launched their own version of Black Friday which runs for a month, not a day.
Perhaps
they should call it Black Month, or Black Widow because it is just as
harmful to your bank balances as the spider’s bite. Employers are forced
to pay attention as their staff request inordinate salary advances so
that they can take advantage of incredible price offers and, get this,
make big savings! If you buy that you’ll buy anything.
A
study conducted among Internet users in Kenya showed that the items
that they purchased the most outside food and pharmaceutical products
were clothing, entertainment and electronics, in that order. We wanted
to identify what people searched for online and bought offline in order
to understand the impact of search on shopping patterns.
The
entertainment sector was at top of the list when searching for
products, followed by electronics, and fashion came in third position,
showing that physical clothing stores still have significant influence
on purchasing decisions.
However, as online shopping
gains traction the numbers are bound to surge forward as consumers begin
to make their decisions purely on what they see online, coupled with
product and user reviews.
The first obstacle that we
must get over is referred to as the trust threshold which indicates the
level of comfort that the masses have with payment systems employed, as
well as the faith they place on their retailers to deliver the
merchandise as promised.
There are too many con jobs
out there and we get queasy if we have to part with our money before we
have the product safely in our keeping.
The retailers
must also get over their trust issues. The credible vendors struggle
with shipping items until they see the money as they have encountered a
great number of bank cheques of the rubber variety — those with springy
elasticity and bounce. Naughty customers are in plenty, leading to a
lipa-mbele-ya-kula (pay before you eat) way of life.
When
mobile payment system M-PESA was introduced a decade ago it only began
to fulfill its income potential with the gradual rise of society’s trust
in it.
It was a similar story with Tanzania’s
introduction of mobile money even though they had witnessed the Kenyan
example a few years earlier. The shopping channel on GTV had identical
experiences and when they promised to deliver the products to homes
prior to receiving payment, the shoppers would still prefer to commute
all the way to Thika to touch the product before they completed the
transaction.
While bankers turn a blind eye to this
opportunity because the hurdles to creating easy and secure systems for
retailers are too high to scale, M-PESA will make hay while the sun
shines and rewrite the history of retail in the country.
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