Tag: online shopping

With digitisation reshaping the retail landscape, the future of the industry is unfolding before our very eyes. Since the pandemic began and lockdowns ensued, retailers have been forced to rethink the way they do business and, in particular, the way they serve their customers. 

Welcome to the holiday shopping season for 2021, the second impacted by the pandemic. Supply chain issues aren’t the only things that can ruin your holidays this year. Global Supply chain issues and scenes of countless ships waiting to unload their global cargo have certainly reminded us all of how interconnected we are around the globe.

The Festive Season is a time when most South Africans, like the rest of the world, will be looking to spoil their loved ones by purchasing them gifts. Over the past few years, South Africans have been lucky enough to be able to take advantage of the discounts that are offered on Black Friday (the last Friday in November) and Cyber Monday (the Monday immediately following Black Friday).

This year, Black Friday will fall on 26 November. As has been the trend for the last few years, many retailers have already started offering discounts on goods since the beginning of the month. Last year (2020), many South Africans took to social media to lament their dissatisfaction with what many termed 'Black Friday scams'.

Urban logistics as a subsector has benefited from the surge in online shopping and the demand for ever-shorter delivery times. While the pandemic has driven sustained and unprecedented disruption of property as an asset class, self-storage has emerged as a resilient sub-sector.

The rise of e-commerce in the country over the past year may have been driven by the pandemic, but it was long overdue. It is worth noting that South Africa was arguably too slow in initially adopting e-commerce, chiefly because it appeared focused on the niche upper end of the market. Thus, many retailers did not view it as a necessity.

As the COVID-19 crisis redefines how economies and society as a whole function, human ingenuity has sparked a wave of innovation set to be the blueprint for the decades to come. According to the 2021 Trends, organisations will have the opportunity to map out new territory as they embrace new strategies, services and experiences to meet evolving human needs.

While traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers attempt to navigate their way out of the Coronavirus pandemic, local online retailers are seeing a massive spike in sales, as the shift from real to virtual goes into overdrive. What’s next for the retail industry, and as lockdowns are eased around the world, to what extent will these spikes remain?

What are your rights when an online transaction goes wrong? The worldwide pandemic, and associated lockdown, have brought about many changes in consumer behaviour. One of which is the surge in online shopping. As South African consumers adapt to the new normal, where traditional ways of shopping are largely discouraged in favour of online shopping (in an effort to promote social distancing), the number of card-not-present transactions (card transactions that occur while the buyer and seller are not in the same place) has increased exponentially.

An interview with Jason Sive, CEO, Mobicred, and Dr Ivor Blumenthal, CEO, ArkKonsult, discussing how shopping behaviour adoption rates and purchasing trends have altered as a result of the lockdown.