By Dipo Olowookere
More than 4.8 million orders were processed at the Jumia 2020 Black Friday period, with over 55 per cent of the packages reaching customers in less than 24 hours, Business Post has learned.
Also, over 113 million customers visited the Jumia platform in the period, with over 1.5 billion page views. In addition, the 2020 Jumia black Friday videos had three times more views than the 2019 edition, with over 99 million views recorded.
According to Jumia, there was a huge growth in sales for sellers on the platform as over 41,500 sellers used the platforms to reach millions of customers during the period.
There was a record 141 per cent year-on-year growth on the number of items sold from top 20 sellers during the event, as international brands such as Nike, Samsung, P&G, Unilever, Coca-cola, Nestle and Nokia, all partnered with Jumai for the Black Friday sales
Items sold in the top products category on the platforms were also on a record high, as fashion products led the sales record, followed by beauty, home, FMCG and phones products respectively.
“Jumia Black Friday is an opportunity for us to ensure that customers have access to our essential products through Jumia during the Covid-19 period,” said Afan Ownwardi, Reckitt Benckiser Nigeria.
Jumia’s fintech product, JumiPay also recorded customers adoption growth of over 55% compared to the 2019 Black Friday sales, with 34% of orders paid for via the JumiaPay app during the 2020 Black Friday.
Black Friday originated in Philadelphia, the United States, where it was used by police to describe the heavy pedestrian and vehicular traffic that would occur on the day after Thanksgiving Day.
The day is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November and many stores offer highly promoted sales and open very early.
“Black Friday has routinely been the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States at least since 2005 and possibly longer,” Wikipedia said.
This year’s edition was different because the COVID-19 pandemic made physical sales almost difficult because of rules put in place by the government to control the spread of the contagion, making online orders the preferred option.
