Uganda as a country is still lagging behind when it comes to Online Shopping. Online Shopping is defined as the process of buying and selling of goods and services online or the Internet. The few web shops that have set up a presence on the internet would have most of their customers from countries other than Uganda that have embraced the credit card which is one of the tools required to facilitate the process.
Online shopping per say should not take the route of the Credit Card for local transactions. Local Transactions can be settled either by Cash on Delivery(COD), Wire Transfers or Cheques as buying of goods on the international market is reserved for the Credit Card. The credit crunch will even make it harder for the acquisition of credit cards. It is for this reason therefore that more creative thinking along the traditional methods like the cheques and wire transfers comes into play.
Nakumatt, Uchumi, Game and other big players in the sector have hit the market giving the local firms a run for their money. Small firms will always survive inspite of the big ones being next to them but the question is how long and by what margins?
By now all the local supermarkets should be having websites not information but merchant websites with uploaded catalogues of their stock, an updated version of new stock and Items on offer. The stock online must be a replica of what is in the offline stores. A provision of signing up customers with the intent of getting discounts could be a rewarding scheme for both parties.
This in turn creates third party services like delivery of commodities to customers homes and so on and so forth. A customer in Kyaliwajala wanting to shop at Uchumi will still have to spend a bit of time and money to go to Garden City but you could continue doing your other work as the shopping and the delivery is done for you.
Depending on how the above is executed, Banks would then find it a viable venture to roll out massively the credit card in the process making the buying and selling of goods online a reality but so far this is still at the very beginning of infancy.
