To avoid long queues and big crowds, shoppers in Nigeria now prefer smaller stores located in the neighbourhood for groceries.
Findings from a BusinessDay survey on some small supermarket stores in Lagos like Ego supermarket and Best Buy, located in Surulere and De Prince at Gbagada showed a growing trend of consumers shifting to these stores compared to large retail stores in malls such as Shoprite, the South African retail chain.
“Many people are patronising their neighbourhood supermarkets more. And it is not surprising because these stores are less crowded, less stressful and their rows are more relaxed. And with more people going for neighbourhood stores, it has made the stores to grow as well,” said Amanda Etuk, general manager, Zippy Logistics, a logistics and supply chain firm.
After a five-week lockdown of economic activities that started on March 31, 2020, and ended on May 4, the government kept some restrictions on places to curb the spread of COVID-19. For example, malls are expected to maintain a 60 percent occupancy rate, in line with the physical distancing rules, with hand sanitizers, washbasins, and temperature checks as compulsory requirements at entry points.
“The mall culture in Nigeria was driven by the glamour and ambience of shopping in major malls. However, due to COVID-19, getting into the malls require long queues and many precautions needed to be able to shop,” Ayorinde Akinloye, consumer analyst at Lagos-based CSL Stockbrokers said.
Akinloye explained that safety concerns would be at the top of consumers’ minds. “Thus, it’s not unusual to observe people patronising household stores where they can easily buy their products in minutes rather than spend long hours on queues.”
Titi Olusola, a banker who normally does her grocery shopping at Shoprite said that since the COVID-19 pandemic started, she now only goes to her neighbourhood market.
“Before the pandemic, on Fridays, you would see a large crowd of people but now it is less because people would rather buy their items close by,” Korede Adeleke, a consumer said.
Nigeria is not the only country where this thread is noticed. Smaller stores in the U.S like Zeigler’s Produce, Heintzelman’s Meat Market, Giant and Weis have also noticed customers coming to their stores than usual to avoid long lines and big crowds from big stores.
Fabian Ajogwu, a professor, senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and chairman of Novare Equity Partners, developers of the 22,000 square metres Novare Lekki Mall in Lagos recently disclosed at a real estate webinar that the retail business was going through tough times as a result of the rampaging coronavirus pandemic and governments’ reactionary measures.
“What we have witnessed in all of this is a drop in what we call footfalls (the number of people entering a shop or shopping area in a given time) in the mall for obvious reasons; the impact is not necessarily from COVID-19, but from the reactionary measures that has come from governments across states and regions,” he said.
With more concentration of consumers in smaller stores, experts believe that this development will have a negative effect on big retailers.
Damilola Adewale, a Lagos-based economist, said, “Consumer patronage is a positive correlate of retailer’s revenue performance. Once that drops, it has serious implications for revenue amid costs and other contractual obligations they have to meet.”
But an anonymous retail analyst at Broll Nigeria believes that the new trend is temporary as consumers might go back to the malls once the pandemic is over.
“The whole mall experience comes as a package. I don’t think this trend will stay for long because the smaller malls don’t capture the entire traffic that the big malls have,” she said.
