The Semacraft Blog

Shredded cabbage for sale, Wote, Kenya 3rd February 2012

Convenience can mean different things to the household consumer, depending on their location. In urban Chicago, its stocking up the freezer and pantry with a trip to a megastore like Costco while in Singapore it might be the ubiquitous neighbourhood hawker stand where rice, meat, two veg can be had for as little as $2.50 per person. Here in the mostly rural, arid Makueni district of Kenya where the concept of leftovers is moot and only bars and restaurants tend to have a refrigerator, convenience means stopping by the cabbage lady for just enough for tonight’s meal.

Kerosene sales, Wote, Kenya 4th Feb 2012

Purchasing patterns observed previously among those on irregular income streams have been clustered into  four major categories:
1. Prepaid or pay as you go
2. Bulk purchases of non perishables
3. Sachetization or as its called here in Kenya, kadogo
4. On demand, for immediate use

The shredded cabbage, being sold by weight or “amount” (half a cabbage or quarter) is a clear example of the last pattern and common across the world while the way kerosene is being sold could be said to be closer to a ‘sachet’ or small purchase as it tends not to be a daily or on demand purchase.

Interestingly, here I saw bulk purchasing for firewood or charcoal rather than foodgrains since most families have some land where they grow maize.  The maize is first and foremost for household use and only the surplus is sold.

So why have I called this ‘convenience as a service’?

There is a premium one is paying for the convenience – whether its the shredding being done for you or the difference in price of kerosene between the town and the village.  Someone has saved you the time and effort thus it costs money. There’s an entire economy around water and its supply chain that I’ll be taking a closer look in a forthcoming post.

Consumer electronics stall in informal market, Nairobi Kenya 23 January 2012

Increasingly I have been getting the sense that there are some fundamental issues with the way BoP focused organizations are developing, creating and implementing their market entry strategies.  Here are four of the most obvious errors that I’m seeing:

Assuming there’s no competition

Most of these firms, particularly those coming in from the outside and seeking to serve the ‘poor’ in the developing world seem to be operating in a vacuum. Observing their market entry actions point to an underlying assumption that they are entering a virgin market where  no competing solutions for their product or service exist.  If this fundamental premise is mistaken then every element of their marketing, communication, distribution and pricing strategy will naturally suffer.

A caveat here is that it might indeed be a virgin market for branded international solutions in the formal market but this is where overlooking the informal markets and existing practices in user behaviour can be far more dangerous since this is where the competition will come from in the form of substitutes or alternate solutions.

Because of the above assumption, little effort is made to uncover information about the customer, the market or competition or the operating environment. Whether this is due to a vacuum of information on BoP markets or the developing world, or this subject simply not being taken into consideration, the fact remains that this oversight then gives rise to a series of errors (like the domino effect) – those in marketing strategy viz., marketing communications, value propositions and positioning not to mention pricing.

Conflating company mission with marketing strategy

While this is most commonly found among well meaning social enterprises entering these markets for the first time with their life saving products for the poor, large multinationals with previous experience in the developing world are not immune the minute they choose to focus particularly on the BoP (or poor) market.

Tata Nano is the most obvious example of this although here one wonders how much of this had to do with their actual marketing communications and advertising for the Nano and how much to do with all the media hype around the car being specially for the ‘common man’? All the positioning and branding in the world through formal advertising and communication channels could not overcome the public perception of the ‘poor man’s car’ created by every other article – from engineering news to international styling – on the Nano.

Similarly, if all the marketing communications, press reports and online information is geared towards the ‘poverty alleviating” mission of the company then this lack of clear focus or understanding of who the target audience is will come through in the positioning and branding of the product in the marketplace.  And no one will aspire to buy the ‘poor man’s product’ if it means a clear signal of having failed to succeed or admitting defeat among their friends and neighbours.

Confusing value proposition with need

This lack of clarity and understanding about the target audience for a product or service and thus, its marketing communications and messaging then snowballs into incorrect positioning of the product or incorrectly identifying the value proposition for the end user.

The end result might be the same – the customer choosing to buy your product – but the pain points may differ tremendously across geographies and regions, not to mention socioeconomic strata. An example is water saving flush toilet mechanisms being sold in Nairobi as a sustainable, greener alternative – that is, the same positioning and value proposition as that used in the eco-conscious parts of the Northern European continent. Sales are sluggish. But when you take into consideration that there is a water shortage or that many communities need to purchase water in tankers to fill their household storage tanks, a simple shift in positioning to “Spend less money flushing down the toilet” or some such clever quip could in fact make a more sensible approach in this situation for the very same product.

This gets more obvious the lower down the income stream you go – Mama Mboga with her vegetable stand may not have the same priorities nor relate to the same value propositions that social impact investors do.

Overestimating the ability of a faceless brand to communicate value

There is probably a snappier sentence to capture this aspect but at this stage of understanding the BoP markets and their challenges its perhaps better to be clear than pithy.  Some have called this issue one of Trust and in the past, I’ve referred to it as Commitment but the fact remains that this aspect is the most challenging and difficult to overcome as a barrier to acceptance.

Even megabrands accustomed to instant global recognition such as Google may find that not only is their brand unknown and unheard of in these new and emerging markets but others may have gotten there before them.  Which, in a way, brings us back to the first point in the assumptions made at the very beginning of considering market entry strategies in the rising global middle class.

Today’s meeting threw up an interesting observation that made me think about problem areas, how they’re identified and how they may be deconstructed. In simpler terms, the difference between the “what” and the “why”.

Take two regions in a country, one far more fertile and having a better overall economy than the other. Yet both areas face the same lack or unmet need. Take a product which fills this need. Yet it’s sales in the far more economically challenged area are more than double that of the first region. Why?

The numbers provide the managers a means to identify a problem. But they are not able to provide any explanation for the discrepancy.  It was the numbers themselves that originally identified the first region as one which would be a good location to launch a product – average income was X, unmet need was felt by almost 90% of the population etc etc.

This is where putting people first, followed by supporting metrics (data) makes sense. Or rather in the case of those who attended today’s meeting, where their data now needed answers that only the people generating those numbers could answer themselves.

Data, charts, graphs, metrics and numbers all have a role to play but when they are about human beings (and not just the number of cars per minute produced in an automated factory line) I believe that role is a supporting one, not the Oscar winning star of the show.

Photo credit: Muchiri Nyaggah, May 2011

I have been meaning to write this post for quite some time now, percolating as it has in the back of my mind but it was Mark Kaigwa’s recent comment that finally spurred this writing. This is not all about MPesa, though it will take a look at some of the issues why its runaway success in Kenya has not yet been duplicated elsewhere, beyond the obvious brought up in most articles of “its the banking regulations” or “its the distribution network”.

Much credit of the fundamental thinking that will underlie this post’s premise must go to Wambura Kimunyu of Cellulant with whom I’ve discussed these issues in Twitter.  Furthermore, I believe that if we can frame the problem (and thus the potential solution) correctly, we may be onto something that could in fact make a big difference to the many ways  we attempt to enable and support social and economic development.

Some background
The topic today is the mobile phone (which I’ll also refer to as the mobile platform, since the phone aspect is but a feature of this handheld device) and its role among what is popularly known as the BoP or those at the Base or Bottom of the Pyramid, yet when I think about the very many pilot programs and attempts to spur development via the mobile platform or, as in the case of MPesa, to launch game changing mobile money transfer et al systems elsewhere, what immediately comes to my mind is a reflection on the issues that plagued the analysis of the success of Asus’ eeePC when it was first launched back in late 2007.

We take very affordable and very portable netbooks for granted today but back then in time, the category did not exist until Asus launched their 7″ linux based, open source, rugged and durable beauty for around USD 400.  It was referred to as a “subnotebook” back then and caused much head scratching among the developed world’s leading lights, even as it spurred all manner of competitors to focus on the two most obvious elements of its perceived success criteria – “price” and “form factor”.  Whereas I argued, that what made the Asus eeePC so successful was its fundamental premise – to be an easy to use affordable device squarely aimed at emerging markets and how it was this positioning that drove every other element, including its form factor and price. By focusing only on the obvious, without taking the holistic thinking and underlying value proposition into consideration, competitors were overlooking many of the details that supported its initial success.

Some framing
I see something similar happening with one of the most obvious success stories in the “Mobile as a platform for economic development of the BoP” bandwagon.  MPesa shows up in most analyses of “Business models or mobile thingies that are helping the poor” reports churned out so faithfully by researchers everywhere, yet the question arises, should it be even considered in that sandbox of things that help the poor in the first place? And by doing so, are we overlooking some of the factors of what makes it work so well in Kenya as well as misinterpreting that it was meant to be used only by the poor?

When the first reports of MPesa’s hiccups in South Africa came to light, it was then that Wambura first tweeted about the lack of the banked that were critical to spur the unbanked and thus the overall uptake of the service.  That is, if the MPesa ecosystem did not have enough banked people with money to circulate, then there wouldn’t be enough unbanked nor would there be enough money to circulate etc etc leading to the challenges that they are facing in South Africa now.  You needed the banked to bank the unbanked.  It sounded counter intuitive to me back then but over time as I observed many different facets of this activity across different strata in Kenya it came to me just how much sense this made and also how relevant this aspect was for the success of anything that should be considered as a means to improve incomes among the BoP when using the mobile platform (or otherwise, to be honest).

Why so?

Some systems thinking
That is, for any solution designed to enable the flow of wealth – mobile money transfer for example – or improve wealth creation at the BoP – it was not enough to simply target the poor alone. It would not work as a “Solution for the BoP” primarily because the BoP do not have any liquidity,  even if they do indeed have assets especially in rural areas, or they do not have the cash for it to flow through the system in the first place. Thus solutions aimed at improving economic activity for the poor needed ‘non poor’ actors in the ecosystem in order to inject cash into the system and thus make it flow (and one hopes, grow).

Taking this thought one step further, MPesa – assessed as a holistic ecosystem for financial transactions – has been so very obviously successful in the Kenyan context primarily because it is used by everyone, regardless of their economic standing or bankedness (if I may coin a non word).  In fact I believe that the number of banked actually surpasses the number of the unbanked – there is a link there that right now is not in the scope of this post but we can look at it later.

And thus, when ‘Solutions on the mobile to help the BoP or poor’ are considered, they should be looked at in terms of the complete ecosystem including the critical question of Where will the money come from into the system in the first place?  Without which, they will limp along as a cash poor system with little wealth to circulate, achieving nothing for the BoP in question. Look at this article on MPesa repositioning itself in South Africa towards higher income brackets and away from the original target audience of poor rural women. QED.

Solutions meant to improve economic conditions for the BoP cannot be focused only on the BoP.
Rather the focus needs to shift to complete ecosystems that fill a vacuum of need – usually in infrastructure or services – that include actors from differing socio economic strata in order to make a viable difference to larger population involved.  Not only is MPesa a clear example of this framing – it filled the vacuum of “how to securely and affordably send money” – but it did so for everyone and anyone who wanted to do so.

Similarly, when I consider my favourite example of the Mumias Sugar Company and their payroll management pilot program for their daily wage sugar cane cutters, I see the same potential for a greater impact on social and economic development for the lower income demographic involved in this system. The solution is one that is win win for all stake holders – from the company who doesn’t need to send armed guards with cash into the fields to the workers who now not only have savings accounts but don’t need to carry lumpsums of cash around with them on payday.

I also hear that real time inventory management and other enterprise level solutions for supply chain management are also moving onto the MPesa/mobile platform in Kenya – again involving the tiniest duka as well as the big name manufacturers or distributors.  Again we can see the potential impact on inventory management and thus, cash flow, even at the bottom of the retail pyramid, where its most critically needed and we can project the potential that it will improve the economic standing or at least help smoothen the variability of income streams that these smallest players in the informal economy require.

Will all stakeholders benefit? Yes. And will the members of the ecosystem who happen to fall into the so called BoP category benefit? Most likely. And more likely than if only the lowest segment was involved in a system of this sort rather than participating in the larger ecosystem of buyers and sellers.

Bottom line
Bringing all this back to the framing of the solution space or rather, the analysis of the success factors, I believe that a simple shift away from seeing only the obvious – mobiles! money! BoP! -  system level solutions that fill critical infrastructural and service gaps in locales where there are few or inadequate alternates and that serve many including the BoP can and will do far better to improve the economic wellbeing across the board of society that those that focus on one demographic alone.

A former student of mine just mailed me this article “Extracting Key Lessons in Service Innovation” (pdf) by S.Wooder and S. Baker, recently published in the Journal of Product Innovation Management, January 2012 edition. Here is the abstract of the article:

This paper describes how Sagentia—working with Vodafone, Safaricom, and other organizations—played a significant role in the creation and delivery of a landmark mobile money transfer and payment service for emerging markets, starting in Kenya. In this profile we examine the organization aspects and approach that contributed to the success of the service: the lessons we learned as the technology provider and how the experience has informed and strengthened our service innovation processes.

Reading through, what I found most valuable among the basic principles so simply and clearly articulated, was this insightful description of service innovation, as pertaining to the ways that a human centered design innovation team can work to improve the customer experience for any company, large or small:

What Is Service Innovation?  Creating and Delivering Value

We are familiar with service innovation examples such as music download, loyalty programs, franchise chains, ticket/check-in kiosks, and online tax returns.

Service innovation can be described as a combination of technology innovation, business model innovation, social-organizational innovation, and demand innovation, with the objective of improving existing services (incremental innovation), creating new value propositions (offerings), or creating new service systems (radical or transformational innovation) (IfM and IBM, 2008). The key components of service innovation can be distilled down to “participative” value delivery; [...]

So if the service is considered to be:

• something that may or may not entail physical product delivery or consumption
• a value delivery mechanism that connects the enterprise to the customer
• the combination of a value proposition, a delivery mechanism, and a customer’s experience

Then service innovation is simply innovation applied to one or more of the following areas:

• new concepts and/or value propositions
• new delivery mechanisms and/or business models
• new experiences

[...] Successful service or product innovation encompasses progress from the creative act (the so-called fuzzy front end) to the commercialization act (execution) and beyond that to sustainability and evolution of the innovation. Our simple framework for service innovation is shown in Figure 3

 And finally, they share with us the mapping of MPESA on to this service innovation framework.

The authors conclude their informative article with the following words:

Key lessons that were highlighted by our experience with M-PESA include:

• Learning in a detailed sense the needs of users in new markets and ensuring that it is possible to implement these needs and requirements as part of a pilot process;
• “Keeping it simple”; particularly in the early stages of the service, it is important to focus on a small set of compelling, marketable functions and features;
• Ensure that flexibility and agility, the ability to react and to respond to changes in the business model, are designed into the system; and
• For a service to succeed, it requires a critical mass of users as soon as possible; identifying mechanisms to motivate users to take up the service is an important part of the service innovation process.

The results of the study cannot claim to be generally applicable; however, it has allowed the “usefulness” of the conceptual stages in the service innovation framework to be empirically tested in a real-world example, and the vulnerabilities and strengths are better understood as a result.