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Understanding how shoppers think and behave over busy holiday shopping periods can be extremely helpful for brands and retail platforms in order to enhance their customer shopping experience, be it online or in-store. With the retail landscape shifting in a pandemic environment, businesses are looking for creative and insightful ways to tap into shopper drivers in order to maximise revenue generation.

Over the past 18 months, COVID has forced many of us to reconsider what we previously thought of as healthy eating habits. Borderless Access surveyed people’s changing eating habits around the world. Here we look at how people living in Sub-Saharan Africa (for this study we focused on Nigeria and South Africa) compared to their global peers, on this topic.

Sub-Saharan Africans are not health-trend followers

Worldwide, three-quarters of people have experimented with an aspect of their diet, with vegetarian preferences and low-sugar and low-fat options being the most popular. While almost 80% of Nigerians say they have tweaked their diet to some degree, around half of South Africans say they haven’t made any changes. Globally, there has been a dramatic shift towards meat-free diets, with 19% of all respondents admitting they had sought out vegan options. By contrast, only 6% of South Africans and 7% of Nigerians had done the same. This may be a reflection of the importance that meat-based meals play in these two cultures. However, when we looked at the number of people looking to reduce the amount of meat they ate overall, Sub-Saharan Africa followed closely behind international trends.

Globally, lockdowns limiting people’s movements, coupled with a genuine fear of contracting COVID-19, have delivered a brutal blow to the hospitality industry. In Sub-Saharan Africa the lockdown rules in some countries have spanned from bans on the sale of alcohol in addition to strict curfews, intensifying the financial predicament for restaurants in particular. 

Borderless Access has done extensive research into the meal-buying habits of people living in Sub-Saharan Africa, specifically South Africa and Nigeria. Here we examine data on people’s buying habits, whether short-term or permanent, with regard to visiting restaurants, ordering takeaways, opting for drive-through choices, ordering meal kits to be cooked at home, buying ready-made meals from grocery stores, or choosing to only cook at home.

Kenya and Nigeria cautiously optimistic in their marketing endeavours

Covid-19 has turned the world upside down for almost every industry. The marketing industry is no exception. Globally, close to half of marketers have reduced their marketing activities for the meantime, aiming to increase them to full capacity again in the future. From a Sub-Saharan perspective, we see Kenya and Nigeria following this trend, while the South African shows more polarization: On the one hand some marketers have reduced their activities altogether while some on the other hand have actually increased them during the evolution of the pandemic.

Seattle, Washington, USA, 7 Oct, 2020: Borderless Access, the digital market research products and solutions company, today announced the appointment of Ebere Barbara Egbule as Associate Director, Client Development for Nigeria and West Africa Region.

Finding ourselves in the middle of a global pandemic has been a shock. We’ve spent a lot of time fine-tuning ways in which we can prevent ourselves from catching the virus. COVID-19 has prompted many of us to examine our health, with 63% of people around the world reporting that coronavirus has encouraged them to seriously consider their levels of health and fitness. We’ve taken a closer look at global changes with regard to general health, hygiene and fitness, with a special focus on Nigeria and South Africa.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has pivoted the world in countless new directions, a significant one being the exponential embrace of digital engagement. The field of health care is, of course, one that has been at the forefront of many pandemic-related changes. Medical professionals have had to adapt their entire way of working – and the public has responded. Borderless Access brings you findings from ten countries on how modes of medical consultation have and will continue to change, post lockdown.

As South Africa, along with the rest of the world, strives to jump-start the economy after its unprecedented hiatus, Borderless Access shares the financial and banking behaviour of our citizens. We provide a glimpse into how South Africans bank, what financial decisions they have made, both pre and during COVID-19, and understand where they invest their hard-earned money.