Ensuring quality in a decentralised e-commerce revolution

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According to data gathering and visualisation specialist Statista, e-commerce sales are expected to exceed R70tn in 2024. South Africa alone is predicted to reach the R100m mark in the next two years, according to the World Wide Worx Online Retail in South Africa 2024 report.

With millions of products being offered by individual sellers on marketplace platforms that do not own the inventory themselves, buyers may be concerned about getting what they paid for.

Many of these fears stem from user experiences on social media-based platforms, which offer little to no protection to buyers. Scams and fraud are commonplace, as are “sellers” creating fake profiles and listings.

However, when it comes to established professional marketplaces, checks and balances are in place.

Craig Lubbe, head of marketplace at Bob Group, explains that sellers maintain their own product listings.

“This means that sellers on the platform can write high-quality product listings while maintaining their own style or voice. With a decentralised marketplace, sellers must play an active role in fulfilling orders. While our Bob Shop platform facilitates safe payments and logistics integrations, the seller is still responsible for processing their orders within their stipulated times.”

The platform offers a well-utilised user rating system so buyers can assess the seller they are dealing with. Lubbe and his team, meanwhile, focus on creating consistent delivery experiences across all sellers and automating much of the communication around delivery.

“The rating system is an effective tool,” Lubbe says.

“From a seller’s point of view, it allows some visibility as to the integrity of the buyer, who may be placing bids on an active auction of a fixed-price sale. From the buyer’s perspective, it can help inform their decision-making when purchasing from two or more different sellers. Our online security team also monitors user ratings.”

To further ease shoppers’ minds, marketplace platforms are increasingly offering buyer protection programmes. Though the aim is always to make the user experience trouble-free, these programmes act as a consumer safety net.

They cover situations where the seller fails to ship the purchased item, or the item is materially different from how it was described on the site or app.

By way of example, a breakdown of the Bob Shop model looks like this:

R2,000 when buying from unverified sellers.
R5,000 when buying from verified sellers.
R7,500 when buying from Basic stores.
R10,000 when buying from Advanced stores.
R12,500 when buying from Premium stores.
100% cover for items purchased on our Daily Deals.

Lubbe adds that customers on the platform can expect to receive multiple shipments for larger orders. Last year, it introduced “R30 shipping” to maintain an attractive offering despite not being able to consolidate orders across multiple sellers.