Jumia Assures Customers of Quality Service Despite Market Challenges

Jumia Assures Customers of Quality Service Despite Market Challenges

Emma Okonji

Jumia, Africa’s e-commerce platform has reiterated its commitment to serve customers better despite market challenges occasioned by the effect of COVID-19 on global businesses.

Aside the impact of COVID-19 on businesses, the buying pattern of Africans is also posing some challenges to e-Commerce business, where many still largely believe in physical market place where they can converge to buy household items and foodstuff, rather than shopping online in today’s digital era.

Former CEO of Jumia, Marek Zmyslowski, said e-Commerce business could be challenging in Africa at the moment, but assured customers of the future prospect of e-Commerce business and promised that Jumia would continue to provide quality services and products for customers, despite the challenging moment.

According to him, the success of Amazon’s story could be regarded as far from a smooth ride. He explained that the same Amazon that has become a global brand in e-Commerce business today, had its own teething challenges that they later overcame. He said the media went as far as writing negative stories about Amazon, even though those stories were written by people who claimed to be journalists but without formal journalistic training.

Zmyslowski therefore assured Nigerians and Africans that with the current business strategies of Jumia, which seek to serve customers better, the e-Commerce company, which currently plays big in the African e-Commerce space would become as big as Amazon in few years time.

According to Zmyslowski, Jumia’s average Short Volume Ratio, which is the number of shares short in a stock divided by the stock’s average daily trading volume, for the last 12 months is around 25 per cent. In financial markets, anything above 10 per cent is pretty high and above 20 per cent is extremely high. Zmyslowski said the value of the public stock is simply a result of the investor’s/buyers’ confidence in the company’s future.

The current CEO of Jumia Nigeria, Massimiliano Spalazzi, said: “We are uniquely positioned to step up and be part of Africa’s response strategy in this challenging time. We have implemented a “Contactless” delivery option, which eliminates any possibility of physical contact. Convenience, social distancing and cashless measures are woven into one solution to combat the current situation.”

Speaking about the recent partnership between Jumia and Mastercard, designed to incentivize consumers to use cashless payments for essential products in Africa, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Executive Vice President, Financial Services at Jumia, Sami Louali, said: “We are proud to partner with Mastercard as part of our social commitment and business responsiveness to the global pandemic. We are also happy to support our customers by offering them a strong incentive to use cashless payments and providing access to essential products with affordable prices during this challenging time. This incentive will help drive more consumers to adopt JumiaPay, the safe and digital payment method.”

With the partnership initiative between Jumia and Mastercard, consumers who purchase essential products using their Mastercard on the Jumia platform will receive up to a 10 per cent discount on their order, thus encouraging consumers to safely transact using digital payment channels and avoid human-to-human contact, in line with recommendations from global and regional health authorities and governments.

The discount offers from Mastercard and Jumia will be available in five countries including Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.

The partnership, which is designed to serve customers better, supports the various government cashless payment policies in each of these countries, which is an additional step to limit cash exchange at this time of COVID-19.

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