[Habari Symposium] E-commerce in SA shifts up a gear

Showing strong growth

Kalahari.net already serves over 600 000 unique users every month. MasterCard meanwhile estimates that 77% of South Africans with Internet access shop online, though Hadfield admits this figure may well be over-optimistic. Local e-commerce sites, including Kalahari.net and rivals such as Gumtree and Bid or Buy, are all showing strong growth.

The number of online retailers also grew by 25% year-on-year, according to Hadfield.

Online pure plays like Kalahari.net remain far ahead in terms of consumer reach of the bricks-and-mortar retailers experimenting online, says Hadfield. Local players are also busy catching up with global brands launched in this country - Junkmail, for instance, is aggressively attacking Gumtree to regain market share - and succeeding.

The e-commerce eco-system is exploding and business models are overlapping.

B2C embracing C2C

Business-to-consumer (B2C) models have evolved to embrace consumer-to-consumer (C2C) models - Kalahari.net has already rolled out a C2C model in SA with its Marketplace section. The entry point for consumers shopping online is moving to mobile and the social media space is helping to drive growth. Mobile commerce, says Hadfield, is evolving even faster than Internet commerce did.

It's not all good news.

Hadfield admits that SA lags in terms of development and admits consumer trust in electronic transactions remain an issue, even though it is gradually improving.

Most importantly, online retail remain a low priority for traditional retailers and even suppliers - he specifically points to bullying tactics by offline retailers to ensure that suppliers don't sell to online retailers.

A perfect storm

Even so, Hadfield believes a perfect storm of newly affordable broadband, increased consumer trust, new player growth, growth in mobile commerce, greater 'net penetration, increasingly sophisticated supply chains, better user experiences and more effective fraud management will boost online retail in this country to new heights.