How Nigerians save money

What are the products that Nigerians like to save money on? Why and how often do they reach for discounts? The Picodi.com analysis team conducted a survey among Nigerian consumers to check what is their attitude towards sales and to find out the most popular ways to save money.

What we save money on

The pandemic forced many Nigerians to save money. More than half of the surveyed people (84%) admitted that over the past year, they bought more products on sale than before.

The product categories most frequently bought on sale include food, clothes, as well as home appliances. Products bought on sale the least are cars (car parts), jewellery, and home decor.

There are products which Nigerians are willing to wait for instead of buying them at the initial price. These include home appliances (87%), clothes (86%), travel & leisure (85%), sporting goods (82%) or home decor (81%).

On the other hand, there are some categories of products which Nigerians don’t want or can’t wait for — and they buy them regardless of whether there is a sale or not. These include medicine (46% don’t want to wait for discounts), food on delivery (35%), underwear (35%), books (31%), or pet supplies (29%).

Why do Nigerian consumers buy on sales? The most common answer among female and male respondents was that they can save a lot of money thanks to discounts (60% and 53% respectively). The second most popular answer among both men and women 50% and 49% respectively) was that discounts allow them to become familiar with a brand. Almost half of men and women surveyed (45% each) believe that the initial prices are too high, so they look for discounted products.

Not everyone likes discounts. 21% of women and 25% of men ignore sales because they simply don’t worry about the prices. 16% of women and 20% of men don’t buy on sales because they think high quality products are worth their standard price. 8% of women believe that discounted products are poor quality or outdated, although as many as 15% of men share this opinion.

Sometimes Nigerians buy products on sale and never use them. The top 5 categories of products which are thrown away or left unused on shelves are:

1. Food
2. Clothes
3. Underwear
4. Cosmetics and perfumes
5. Home appliances

Nigerian ways to save money

There are many ways to save money, that is why Picodi.com asked Nigerians which methods for finding and using discounts are their favourite.

Among the most popular ones, coupon services placed first. 10% of Nigerians know this method and use it regularly, and as many as 30% use it from time to time. 14% participants admitted that they know what coupon services are, but they don’t use them, and only 46% don’t know what it is at all.

Price comparison services are used regularly by 15% of those surveyed. 22% use them sometimes, 15% know and don’t use them. 48% claimed they don’t know about the existence of price comparison services.

In the third place were store flyers — 14% use them regularly. 21% use them from time to time, 17% know and don’t use them, while 48% don’t know them at all.

Apps for ordering unsold food surplus are not very common (61% of the surveyed consumers don’t know what it is), similar to browser plugins with coupons (57%), cashback services (49%), and shelves with products near the expiration date (51%).

What Nigerians think about ads

What do Nigerians think about advertisements, and do they feel overwhelmed by them? It turns out that almost half (44%) of the respondents think that the number of ads is acceptable. On the contrary, as many as 8% admit that there are too many advertisements. 48% of surveyed Nigerian consumers don’t feel like there are too many ads.

It turns out that the most popular ad that people receive is email — on average, as many as 29 a week. In second place are text messages (24 times a week). Mailbox leaflets complete the podium — consumers see them around 21 times a week.

Push notifications in browsers (19 per week) and in mobile apps (13 per week) are not as frequent.

If you want to be like other Nigerians and save on home appliances, consider checking out our cashback service. With Picodi you can combine discount codes and cashback to save money in stores such as Jumia Nigeria, Aliexpress and Wish.

Methodology

The statistics are from an online survey conducted in July 2021.

Public Use

Would you like to share information about sales and discounts in Nigeria? You are welcome to use all the data and infographics presented in this report for both commercial and non-commercial purposes, provided that you indicate the author of the research (Picodi.com) with a link to this subpage.