Tag: retail

Sometimes, it takes an outsider to allow South Africans to recognise that SA retail innovation is positive in their own country.

In recent years, retail and eCommerce businesses have adapted to the increasing influence of digitalisation. Customers now demand user-friendly digital interactions, with little tolerance for inconveniences. Surprisingly, 86% of customers are willing to abandon a brand after just two negative experiences.

In today's fiercely competitive retail landscape, prioritising customer experience has become crucial for attaining sustainable competitive advantages and ultimately ensuring long-term success. This underscores the need for retailers now more than ever to prioritise customer engagement and aim to enhance the overall customer experience and deliver unparalleled customer satisfaction.

South African retailers have successfully driven positive consumer perceptions through special offers and affordable product promotions, but their customer service capabilities are leaving much to be desired. This is according to the South African Retail Sentiment Index, conducted by DataEQ in collaboration with us.

Digitalisation within the retail space often goes hand-in-hand with disintermediation. While removing the middleman can be beneficial, in the case of the South African main market, it can lead to damaged relationships and a lack of trust between spaza owners and wholesalers.

South African customers are highly conscious of what, how and where they buy. Besides being budget-conscious, they're very aware of the impact of their choices, and this year, consumers will increasingly be driven by preferences.

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?

Black Friday is what happens when the dangerous mixture of anxiety and excitement are blended in a retail test tube. Although we might think that we know what is going to happen, the result is almost never as predictable as we would like it to be; with the risk that it might all blow up always a possibility. Each year in the build-up to the day, both consumers and suppliers deal with the fact that things can go horribly wrong.

On Tuesday Stats SA announced that SA’s GDP had contracted 51% between April and June (using annualised quarter on quarter numbers – in other words, this is a 17% decrease for the quarter) as a result of the lockdown imposed in response to Covid-19. The contraction was shocking – but not unexpected. Given that government took the decision to implement one of the harshest and longest lockdowns globally, the severity of the economic contraction should not come as a surprise.  

Nerina van Niekerk is 24 and lives in Stellenbosch, some 52 kilometres from Cape Town, capital of one of Africa’s most wired provinces. In the Western Cape, 75% of people who are 16 and upwards have access to the internet. This compared to Gauteng, at 55%.