(5 minutes read)
· Shoprite, the South African retail company, will be offering a mobile data and voice service, thereby giving its main competitor Pick n Pay a chase for its money
· Announcing the decision Shoprite CEO Pieter Engelbrecht said Africa’s largest retailer plans to operate its own mobile network, which can leverage its retail business
· This will also help the retail giant to better use the six petabytes of data of its customers to give them access to value added services and maintain brand loyalty
Shoprite, the South African retail company, will be offering a mobile data and voice service, thereby giving its main competitor Pick n Pay a chase for its money. Announcing the decision, Shoprite CEO Pieter Engelbrecht said Africa’s largest retailer plans to operate its own mobile network, which can leverage its retail business. This will also help the retail giant to better use the six petabytes of data of its customers to give them access to value added services and maintain brand loyalty.
However, Shoprite did not give any timeframe for launching the mobile services. Its rival in retail business Pick n Pay announced in last October that it was planning to launch the mobile service, while its Boxer chain would launch Boxercom. Both retail companies are looking forward to leveraging the huge data which they have for foraying into mobile telephony. They could collate these data through the digital transactions that they had engaged during the pandemic days.
Pick n Pay Mobile is piggy riding with MTN’s mobile network infrastructure, using a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) model for extending services to its customers. Under this arrangement, Pick n Pay buys data and voice capacity at a cheaper wholesale rate from MTN and sells to its customers at a slightly higher rate.
These types of arrangements between a telephone company and a retail outfit are there across the world. UK retail giant TESCO has been in this game for quite some time-since 2003 precisely. It has five million subscribers and operates in the UK, Ireland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. Shoprite is targeting to service 17 million reward members, seven billion products sold a year and its 7.5 million monthly digital visitors.
The Shoprite Group of Companies, Africa’s largest food retailer operates more than 2,892 stores in 14 countries across Africa. The company’s headquarters are in Brackenfell in the Western Cape Province. It is listed in Johannesburg Stock Exchange, with secondary listings on both the Namibian and Zambian Stock Exchanges. The Shoprite Group has on its rolls more than 140,000 people, making it the biggest retail chain in Africa.
