The Market that never sleeps

Most of us are used to traditional shopping methods, which require one to leave their home and walk or even drive to a store or a market (e.g. Kariakoo) to purchase what he/she wants. What happens then when the shop keeper or owner closes the store to rest on the weekend?  What happens when stores are closed because it is a public holiday, rains and traffic delayed the shopkeeper, or the stores are on strike. All of these are very real and (and frequent) occasions. Where do you run to during such times of need?

Buyers can access a website and a variety of products from anywhere in the world, and get instant feedback on whether the product they need is available, as opposed to traditional shopping where sometimes, assurance of the availability of a product is a question and prices are a relatively high. One major advantage of e-commerce and specifically online markets is the fact that, as long as you have internet access, you can literally be in a shop for as long as you want to be, whenever you want to be. Orders can be placed at any time and some markets have 24 hour shipping services.

Let us look at a local example, Kariakoo. In late march, there were several strikes carried out by local business owners mainly at the Kariakoo market and other parts, this was due to some disagreements that the business owners had with the government. This strike was very serious in the sense that it affected many buyers, who depend on traditional shopping to get the products they need. Shops that sold online and customers that shopped online were less affected. An example of this is Kaymu.com where buyers continued making their purchase orders through the website and mobile application and sellers sold as usual through the Kaymu channels. The process obviously slowed down due to the strike, but business owners had the chance to still make sales despite the troubles.

“It is amazing how the advantages of online market places can be seen most clearly during situations like these. This should push Tanzanians and Africa as a whole to buy and sell online as opposed to depending on offline buying and selling methods. Business is always changing and we need to keep up as well” says Massimiliano spalazzi, who is Kaymu Africa’s CEO.

All in all, we need to realize that, in times where traditional offline markets fail to provide us with what we are really looking for, i.e products and services as buyers and sales as sellers, we have the other side of the coin to turn to. When offline markets for whatever reason, fall asleep, we know we can turn to the market that never sleeps.