• Saturday, April 27, 2024
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Online vehicle purchases in Nigeria upbeat amid Covid-19

Online vehicle purchases in Nigeria upbeat amid Covid-19

Many Nigerians looking for brand new and used cars to buy, spend more time browsing online for fear and as a precautionary measure of getting infected with the coronavirus pandemic.

If you are a car dealership trying to navigate the uncertainties brought about by the COVID 19 pandemic, it is important that you have relevant and up-to-date data about the purchasing public that are regarded as your customers, according to an automotive online marketplace.

Cheki, the online car marketplace shared a few interesting and expository facts they recently observed regarding the behaviour of car buyers in the past couple of weeks in the face of ravaging coronavirus scourge.

In the last 21 days, for instance, Cheki observed a rapid increase in organic visits to their online car marketplace. Another trend they observed was that the increase in visits had gotten to levels higher than what it was in the weeks before the coronavirus-induced lockdown.

Read also: Stocks hit new highs as Nigeria eases Covid-19 induced lockdown  

This increase in visits also correlated with an increase in leads for sellers on the website. This means that car sellers in Cheki’s marketplace were getting contacted more frequently than in the periods before the lockdown was enforced.

In summary, what this means for car dealers is that, there is currently a higher chance of selling their cars online than ever before. Ikenna Oyenta, marketing manager at Cheki gave three reasons that are accountable to this interesting development.

The first reason is that more people want to avoid public transportation for hygienic and personal space purposes. So owning personal cars have become a high priority.

Secondly, physical movement from dealership-to-dealership has become less appealing. This is because movement, in general, is now seen as risky. So browsing cars online has risen as buyers can see more options from the safety of their homes.

Thirdly, Cheki offers car financing that the online marketplace considers as flexible. With most of the cars on Cheki available for financing, more car shoppers are using the online platform to access finance in buying their new cars.

Fielding questions from BusinessDay on what happens in order for car dealers to keep their businesses running in the instance that the federal government enforces another lockdown, Ikenna recommends that car dealers should have at least five high-quality pictures of each car they have on sale. He explained that this would enable car dealers to easily upload all their cars with specifications and technical details to their Cheki dealer page for visiting car buyers.

Cheki is a digital marketplace for quality vehicles. The online platform provides private car sellers and car dealerships of all sizes with the most qualified leads while simultaneously providing car buyers with a wide variety of quality cars.

The sprawling automotive online platform offers a range of supplementary services that include vehicle asset financing, insurance, and bespoke car buying concierge services. Cheki is a division of Ringier One Africa Media (ROAM), Africa’s largest digital classifieds group.