Evangeline Wiles, Managing Director Kaymu Nigeria, has identified that the middle class citizens continue to foster growth of e-commerce market in Nigeria.
Wiles said that the middle class remain key to sustaining economic and social development in any region and country.
A survey conducted by Philip Consulting, a business management and consulting firm, e-commerce in Nigeria records over $2 million worth of transactions weekly and close to $1.3 billion monthly from 38% of Nigerians who prefer to buy products through the Internet.
“The rapid growth of e-commerce in Nigeria can be attributed to the middle class who are the primary consumers of mass marketed products”, according to Wiles.
“An economy without a mass group of consumers as its foundation cannot be sustained in the long run”, the Kaymu MD added citing that economists define the middle class into relative and absolute terms. In relative terms, this refers to individuals or households that fall between the 20th and 80th percentile of the consumption distribution or between 0.75 and 1.25 times the median per capita income.
Wiles reckons that as Nigeria continues its movement towards a digital economy, online transactions in the country are expected to reach N1 trillion by the end of 2014, in what will be a big boost to the cashless policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) aimed to reduce cash-based transactions.