China Town – Is it Uganda’s Shopping Mecca?

By Ronald Kasoma Last updated Sep 16, 2024 35 0

Hundreds of people making long queues to enter China Town

Let us brace ourselves because the shopping Mecca has dropped into our area code! It’s like Black Friday happening everyday creating epic queues longer than voting queues in a free and fair election – something not many have seen in their lifetime, but I digress! Customers are buzzing with excitement, hunting for bargains like they are on a treasure hunt. But there is a twist in this shopping saga!

While people are losing their minds over prices so low they should come with a warning label, our local businesses are sweating bullets. They are worried that this discount giant might just elbow them out of the retail ring. Local entrepreneurs are crying foul pleading with the government for protection.

Flash back! who remembers Game Store with their bold low price positioning offers, “Nobody beats our prices” and “Find a lower price and we will beat it” Spoiler alert? They did not last long and left us waving goodbye in 2022, joining the ranks of Shoprite, Uchumi Supermarkets Ltd, Warid Telecom among others. I guess they found the grass was not greener on the Ugandan side.

Game Stores at Lugogo Mall. They came with the promise of selling at the lowest prices on the market.

But here’s the kicker, even if the government swoops in like a superhero, enforcing the 40% shelve space reserve for local products, there will always be a new kid on the block ready to shake things up! So, what’s the moral of this retail rollercoaster? Simple: Competing on Price alone is a race to the bottom FOR EVERYONE!

Let us talk a little more about the myth of price segmentation for a second. Yes, there is really no low price-exclusive club! Buyers are always after value. They just value different things! You might think “low Price equals value,” No, price and value are not always in the same lane!

Ever met someone who dropped a cool U$376,850 (that’s about Ushs. 1.4Bn for the uninitiated) on a Mercedes Benz S-Class L500? – well, I have seen one – from a distance haha, even though many rich people may like to display their wealth, generally, they think they know value when they see it and even though they usually are willing to spend more for products that deliver quality improvements they value, they never ‘throw money away’, why? because they too are value seekers!

One of the flyers that Game Stores used to print out and distribute to potential customers.

And then there is us, the proud Vitz owners who are out here living our best life and confidently proclaiming how we are getting the very best value! So what if we are not rolling in luxury? At least, we are cruising on 4 tires and with a smile well knowing that our wallets are full and our fuel tanks light AND that is value enough for us!

So here is the lowdown: It is high time we tune into what consumers really see as value, it’s NOT just about the price tag! Like it or not, there will always be a new ‘ChinaTown’ on the horizon waiting to swoop in so instead of playing the risky price game, differentiate based on other juicy value perceptions that your target audience crave. If your customers are only buzzing about low prices, it just might be that you have not given them anything else to Go Gaga over.