2016年8月21日星期日

Two online shopping giants in kenya Amanbo & Jumia

The convenience and speed of shopping online is rapidly changing the buying mentality of the more than 35 million Kenyans with access to the internet.

They both claim to be the largest ecommerce platform in Nigeria and Africa — even though they won’t make their sales figures publicly available so it could be made easier for those who are interested in comparing their services to do so. This means the only thing that can be legally done is to determine which of them offers the best service delivery.

And since no one else would do it, I decided to order stuff from both platforms and compared the experience. To really get an accurate result, it would make more sense to order from outside since both Jumia and Amanbo have lots of logistics in place in the city. As a matter of fact, they have more pick-up points and vehicles (and motorcycles) and other logistical structures in Nairobi than anywhere else in the country. So I decided to order from Nairobi, a historic kenya city that is about 120 kilometers away from it

Amanbo’s homepage sees a whole Yellow ocean

From Amanbo,I chose to pick up the ordered goods at its office in the city,while on jumia I decided to use the home-delivery service

Turnaround Time

Coincidentally they both delivered after two working days, which was a great improvement considering the fact that about one year ago, orders made outside Nairobi often took at least five working days before they were delivered.

Likewise, there used to be restrictions to the Cash on Delivery service — which saw customers paying for the products at the point of delivery — offered by both platforms. The offer started in Nairobi, but has gradually extended to other parts of the country.

Jumia’s front page sticks to familiarity

Jumia is also doing the same by opening small warehouses in major locations across the nation. With this strategy, both companies are able to deliver promptly.

Minor Things That Truly Matter

On the surface, there is not much difference between the models of both ecommerce platforms and it is not surprising to note they continue to win awards and recognition. However, taking a closer look at the minor issues that are often overlooked reveals there is a very wide margin in terms of customer experience on both platforms.

When the orders were made on both platforms, each of them gave a link that allowed the order to be tracked. While Amanbo’s link worked – and still works more than a week after the order was delivered, the one from Jumia led nowhere.

To Jumia’s credit however, they have a very prompt customer-care service that responded to my email inquiry about my order within 10 minutes and the agent was able to give useful information I would have gotten if the “track order” link had worked.

I ordered on Amanbo first and I didn’t get called by anyone to confirm my order, which was why I was shocked when a call center agent from Jumia called to confirm my order. She didn’t just stop with “I just want to confirm you ordered stuff from Jumia”, but went on to list all the stuff I ordered even though I was receiving the call hands-free. She wasn’t discrete and it actually got embarrassing when I could hear voices in the background.

“These people have no idea about discrete marketing whatsoever and thank God I didn’t order sex toys,” was what I said when she yelled out a female product I ordered for my girlfriend. She didn’t stop there as she also attempted to talk me into buying several other things. The company really hired good marketers.

Delivery

When I saw that my order had arrived in the city via the tracking service on Amanbo, I knew the delivery guy would be at my doorstep on that day so I had to keep a flexible schedule to ensure I was around the address I gave online. He called to notify me that he would be coming over, when he got to the landmark, he also called and we met. As I was making payment, he called the next person that would be receiving an order.

For Jumia, however, all I got were two text messages with two different order numbers and phone numbers to call to pick my stuff up. No address to visit. I began to wonder why the order numbers were different and why hadn’t anyone from the company called to inform me about the arrival of the order? This call was more important than the one for the confirmation of order.

But I also experienced how the company’s return policy works seamlessly, without giving customers headaches; I was also approached by a guy who said he could get me some amazing discounts if I shopped a lot on the platform. Post-delivery, I got an email from Amanbo thanking me for shopping on the platform, and nothing from Jumia, apart from an email asking me to assess its call-center agent.

The Verdict

Last year when I spoke to Jumia’s Jérémy Doutté at the company’s mega-warehouse in Nairobi, he told me the company was managing over 90% of its operations in Nigeria all by itself. This is a Herculean task considering that you’re dealing with a country as huge as Nigeria. But he told me the company would remain committed to enhancing and improving customer satisfaction. This could be much easily achieved by leveraging on already existing infrastructure owned by Nigeria’s largest telecoms company, MTN ,which is a Jumia investor and partner.

It is quite amazing and impressive to note how both companies have taken ecommerce in Nigeria to new heights. My experience with reps of both companies showed business is really good and the fact that several products they are selling are much cheaper than those in stores indicates that online shopping is the real future.

Before I made up my mind, I asked a Nairobi-based online shopper about his experience with both platforms. Without telling him about my experience, he said both platforms were doing great but he gets better customer service from Amanbo.

China will overtake Europe to become Africa's largest trading partner

Early 15th century, Zheng He led a fleet of seven voyages, a legend has arrived in the Arabian Peninsula and the east coast of Africa region, the achievements of maritime history. And as early as this before, China and Africa have been carried out for centuries in the trade, but it is known.

China-Africa trade can be traced back to 200 BC, followed by African, Arab and Asian scholars and travelers who have repeatedly described the prosperity of China and Africa porcelain, silk, cotton, gold, ivory and iron trade. These transactions benefit both China and Africa, after the Tang, Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties, the sixteenth century has flourished.

In the following four centuries, China stopped with the rest of the world trade, until the founding of New China, began to develop relations with other developing countries, and restart the Indian Ocean routes. However, it is still relatively slow start, China-Africa trade until the 1980s was more than one billion US dollars. In 2000, after the establishment of China-Africa Cooperation Forum, China-Africa trade developed rapidly, the total trade volume in 2013 increased by 29 times to 2,102 billion US dollars.

Although the impressive growth of China-Africa trade, but still huge room for improvement. Based Amanbo 16 years, China and Africa while trade in services and commercial success, they think China-Africa trade will take on three mutually reinforcing trends:

First, as the two sides to enhance the economic value chain and trade of raw materials and low-priced products will expand to high value-added products and services; secondly, the rise of the African consumer class will make China-Africa trade and investment cover more African countries; third, the end of 2020, we expect the yuan will become the core of the African currency payment, investment and reserves. Below, we discuss in detail these three trends.

Expand high value-added products and services

According to the current trends, China will overtake Europe to become Africa's largest trading partner in a few years. However, in recent years China-Africa trade remains confined to a large extent, the export of oil and other mineral resources in Africa, China's exports of textiles, clothing and low-cost machines, such cases in recent years appear until changed.

China-Africa trade and variety of products is undergoing rapid change. In recent years, Chinese high-end machines to African exports, communications equipment, electronic and electrical equipment, and motor vehicles increased rapidly, these high-end products has become a major part of China's exports to Africa. With these products, China can be more involved in infrastructure across Africa, Chinese investment in Africa's energy and mineral exploration industry is also increasing.

On the other hand, due to strong Chinese demand for energy, we are also actively seeking energy sources outside the Middle East and mineral resources in the next few years will continue to dominate Africa's exports to China. Currently, about a third of China's oil imports from Africa. Resource exports to Africa has brought much-needed funds, but also African governments to take measures to try to reduce over-reliance on raw materials exports.

African governments are rushing to Somalia from South Africa to open their economies to foreign direct investment in order to enhance the position in the value chain. Chinese enterprises to cooperate with the local government on African roads, railways, ports, airports and power plants has made billions of dollars in investment, partly to make up for about $ 93 billion per year in Africa's infrastructure funding gap. Infrastructure development will enhance the attractiveness of Africa to global enterprises, and thus help Africa rid of dependence on resource exports.

Providing high value-added export products, food processing and has tremendous opportunities. Africa has 60 percent of the world's uncultivated arable land, of which only 10% of the arable land can be used tractors, four percent have irrigation facilities. Improve productivity by promoting scientific farming techniques, the production and then transported to food processing enterprises, and then sold throughout Africa and globally, we can create millions of African jobs. On the other hand, China is facing rapid urbanization brought pressure on arable land. China has begun to import agricultural products from the United States and Latin America, Africa could become its next major sources of imports.

Rising consumer class create market demand

The rise of African consumers is another trend emerged in recent years. According to the research unit expects consumer spending in sub-Saharan Africa increased from $ 600 million in 2010 2020 $ 1 trillion. This is precisely meet the needs of China's exports, because China is its high-value goods and services, find new markets.

Chinese enterprises have begun to enter the untapped consumer market. Traveling in Africa, you will see more innovative, lower-priced "Made in China" car, which is working with manufacturers from Japan and Europe to compete. Similarly, China's high-tech electronic products and home appliances brand with South Korea and Japan are also products for the market.

In addition, Chinese companies are also further integration of African countries, they not only established the China-Africa trade network, as well as between African countries, as well as African and global trade network provides. Many companies are also considering manufacturing base moved to Africa, to close to the local market. At present, China has invested in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Zambia, Mauritius and Egypt to establish export zones.

Three regional free trade zones on the African continent: Southern African Development Community, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and the East African Community, also contributed to this convergence. These regional free trade area in the implementation of trade within the continent also played a key role in the next step, they will merge into a "free trade zone in Africa", from Cape Town to Cairo covering the entire African continent.

The free trade zone will have more than 630 million people, most of them young people, the total GDP of $ 1.2 trillion, is the world's most abundant natural resources, the most uncultivated land areas. With the increasing number of Africa's middle class, as well as improve the political and financial stability, free trade zones in Africa and the world can compete with other economic union, while allowing the African and equality can negotiate free trade agreements with other trade zone. This is similar to the ASEAN economies hope useful gained from economic integration to be implemented in.

Shopping online system gradually grow

African online shopping giants from China: Amanbo platform, support online retail and wholesale,let the Chinese factories and African importers seamlessly connected, eventually forming a complete one-stop shopping system, they have launched offices and exhibition room in seven African countries (including Kenya, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Egypt, etc.), successfully created a new route in Africa and China's import and export,nearly 16 years of Africa's import and export trade basis, rich experience in development and operation of the network platform, innovative OSO (online + social + offline) three-dimensional marketing model of their biggest bright spot.

Kenya's largest news website KNCCI official had expressed strong support to Amanbo, Amanbo resolved high cost of procurement, both credit and trading risk-Africa trade and other issues,Amanbo is the main backbone links to face the future of China

The future, as the globalization of trade promotion. Apparently, China-Africa trade will be more closely, more convenient online shopping will also secure, and Amanbo platform is undoubtedly an important hub for China-Africa cross-border trade.