The popularity of peer-to-peer services has recently switched from computer networks to people, with apps and websites allowing users to receive services such as accommodation and traffic tips or purchase items such as clothes, electronic devices and cars not from professional service providers and shops but from other users.
Users are the main characters of this “peer-to-peer economy” , and led to the extreme success of sites such as Airbnb, CourchSurfing, Waze – recently purchased by Google – and the Nigeria peer-2-peer shopping site TradeStable, on which thousands of users buy cars, clothes and mobile phones from each-other.
TradeStable has conducted an in-depth research on the phenomena of peer-to-peer services and e-commerce, whose results have been put together in an infographic that highlights the growth, user data and top popular countries of all most popular services. Spring 2013 seems to be the period in which peer-to-peer services really “took off”, with couchsurfing.org and airbnb.com quickly reaching respectively 300.000 and 600.000 unique visitors per month, and the free classifieds sites of Schibsted Media Group – to which TradeStable belongs – reaching all-time-highs in traffic.
The research carried out by Tradestable.com.ng lso had an in-depth look at the Nigerian market revealing electronic items, clothes and cars as the products most often sold online. On the opposite side of the trade are shoppers, especially eager to buy TVs, iPhones, iPads, Bags and Shoes – these the most search-for items in the electronics and apparel categories. The research also traced a detailed portrait of Nigeria’s typical online shopper: mostly male and below the age of 30, shopping online on a monthly basis, with a very high a mount of shoppers under the age of 20.
