As the day goes by, the world seems to be adopting technological advancement in various areas of human endeavor. Nigeria is among the countries in Africa where its citizens tries to embrace new technological advancement in anyway they can afford. This country is a developing country which hinders it from reaching an optimal level of being free from some of the challenges posed by these new technology. Here, we will be looking at a growing technological trend in the marketing industry known as online shopping.
Online Shopping is a form of purchasing goods and services online using various online platforms. To make this form of business transactions complete, various mediums such as payment gateway, logistics or delivery services are usually employed. Online businesses can be located in a personal website, social media or other online shops.
The problems of online shopping in Nigeria is making some of its citizens to shy away from this form of purchase. The problems which can arise from delivery or logistics services, bad payment gateway, online scamming and fraud, impersonation, insincerity among sellers will be examined in this article.
Challenges with Online Shopping in Nigeria
1. Insincerity Among Sellers
In Nigeria today, some online vendors are scaring away some of their buyers by being insincere with the goods they are selling. Let me give you an instance with some online clothing vendors in Nigeria that will go as far as presenting a Material different from what they are selling in order to attract buyers. Some of these buyers will place their orders for such “good materials” only to discover on delivery that it is absolutely the opposite of what they ordered for. What these insincere vendors does is to use a sample of a high quality material to attract their buyers. When the money for such a product is being paid before delivery and with no good refund policy, the buyer will be left with no other option than to accept this low quality material.
Equally, some other online vendors will present a fake or substandard product and claim that is original most especially when they buyer can’t distinguish between fake and original. They will sell the fake with the price of the original product. Such dishonest acts are making many Nigerians to shy away from online shopping.
2. Bad Payment Gateway
Many Nigerians gets demoralized when the encounter challenges when trying to pay for the goods or services being ordered online. Some will totally abandon this form of purchase because of the fear of what may go wrong. In Nigeria today, the popular online payment gateways are; Interswitch Webpay, Flutterwave, Paystack, Remita and others. Some of the things that poses challenges to consumers during online shopping are; security threats, system downtime, data transfer error etc. These problems can be from the buyer’s side, merchant’s side or payment gateway.
Not every buyer in Nigeria will be ready to go through the hassles of trying to recover the money debited from failed transactions and other problems associated with having ones credentials leaked during online purchase as a result of security threats, thus, many still prefers traditional shopping.
3. Problems from Logistics or Delivery Services
Logistics or delivery services makes an online purchase complete. This is because until the goods ordered gets to the consumer, the transaction has not been completed. Some inherent factors in Nigerian transportation system such as poor traffic, bad roads may delay the delivery of ordered goods. Also, some vendors do not have adequate delivery services in place to meet up with the number of ordered goods they have. The distance and location of such online vendors also plays a role. Due to the fact that most online business owners prefers to reside in the city, thus, when people residing in the rural areas makes an order, delivery takes longer time to be completed.
In recent times, some dispatch riders has been dispossessed of their delivery items by men of the underworld and in other instances, some delivery items may not be accounted for as a result of misplacement.
Some buyer have been left frustrated in Nigeria after missing events and occasions that prompted them to make such purchase. How does it feel when you can’t wear your chosen dress to that event because of late arrival? Honestly, this is one of the reasons why physical shopping will continue to gain enough patronage in Nigeria.
4. Impersonation by Fraudulent Sellers
I have seen a lot of people who have been scammed of their hard earned money after ordering goods from fake vendors. Since there is no adequate measure in place to check the legitimacy of online businesses in Nigeria, they continue to carry out their various scamming and nefarious acts successfully. Some gets noticed after they may have scammed a lot of people. Unless the business pages or websites of such vendors are massively reported, they will still go ahead to perpetrate such acts. Some Nigerians are afraid of online shopping because most times, they fake vendors can’t be differentiated from the real vendors.
5. Bad refund policy
In some cases, the ordered goods may not get to the consumer in good condition. Some may have be spoilt in transit, others from packaging, thus, reducing the quality of ordered goods. Others like I said earlier as a result of the misrepresentation of products. In a situation whereby they vendor do not have a refund policy, the buyer suffers it. In Nigeria today, there hasn’t been law to checkmate the activities of online vendors, therefore, they go scot-free after deceiving and frustrating their buyers.
6. Network Issues
Not every part of Nigeria is fully developed to have 24/7 internet access. Some buyers have been stucked in the middle of their transaction as result of network failure or poor network services. Others have missed their ordered goods as a result of this. Such people will still prefer physical shopping to online shopping.
7. Illiteracy
It is worthy of note that most Nigerians are illiterate who cannot be able to access the internet, therefore, the online shopping still remains with the elite class who can access the internet. Some don’t even have the device for accessing the internet, such people may not be fully aware of the advantages of online shopping.
Though these are some of the challenges of online shopping in Nigeria, I believe with time, things will get better, thus, convincing most of its citizens to embrace online shopping.
Also Read; 10 Reasons Why People Like Shopping Online