These past three weeks have been a whirlwind of excitement, disappointment and a lot of hard work. We are currently trying to juggle the launch of our marketing campaign, the competition problems between the two kitchens and compiling and analyzing the data we collected from our market research project. We are balancing all of this on top of the daily tasks associated with the kitchens. The thing is that these projects could be completed efficiently and effectively back home in no time. However, this is not Canada. This is Africa and that minute detail changes everything. T.I.A. has become our motto because culture plays a predominant role in everything we do. Everyday is an incredible learning experience and it’s going to be interesting to see what will happen over the next month and a half.
Conducting our market research was an interesting experience as we interacted with locals on a more personal basis and we got a lot of insight into the needs and wants of consumers. We wanted to interview 200 people from Oyugis and surrounding towns where the yogurt mamas sell their yogurt. The market research went well, especially with the aid of our translators, and now we have to compile and analyze the data. This is a substantial task seeing as the surveys are four pages of qualitative data. The end result will be worth it because the data will enable us to help the mamas increase sales and improve customer satisfaction.
While we want sales to increase so that Fiti will be sustainable in the future, there are two other underlying motives. First, the mamas want higher wages, which relative to the number of hours they are contributing to the project every day, it is a fair request. Also, their current daily salary is barely enough to buy food to feed their family dinner that night. We told them that it is their decision to raise wages, but we had to explain that they must improve sales in order to cover the higher wages. They have really made an effort to increase their market presence and attendance at local events, as well as improving their customer service. It’s going to be interesting to see the results in a few weeks’ time.
The second reason we want to increase sales is to support people suffering from HIV/AIDS who cannot afford to purchase the yogurt. This was the original purpose behind this project – to empower women and support people suffering from HIV/AIDS through the nutritional benefits of probiotic yogurt. If the kitchens are able to earn profits after production expenses and wages have been factored in, we are hoping that they will be able to support more of these patients with free yogurt over the long-term. I have been approached by several former clients who were receiving free yogurt for a research study, but have since been cut off. Their friends and family say that the yogurt significantly improved their weight and strength, but they have now lost all of that since they stopped taking the yogurt. Yogurt is considered a luxury good here and most of these families cannot afford to pay 10Ksh for a bag of yogurt, which costs about $0.13 CAD. The reality of the situation is very sad, but we are hoping that our market research and marketing functions will increase sales and benefit the entire community.
In order to increase awareness of the product, we are throwing a music festival. Everyone loves music here; it’s the heart and soul of this place. We decided to tap into this passion and throw a giant music festival. Throughout the music festival the mamas will be selling their yogurt, there will be dance competitions, yogurt chugging contests and other fun events to get the hype started about Fiti. Now that we have finally designed and branded the product, we are putting the logo on free t-shirts and head scarves, stamping it on to people’s hands and printing it on the yogurt bags. The entire town is going to be covered in Fiti writing by the end of the day!
We were originally going to hold the festival on July 16th and after spending weeks organizing everything, we had to postpone the event three days before show time. Turns out there was a ‘YES’ rally (supporting the upcoming constitution) that day on the grounds that we had booked. We wanted everyone’s attention to be on Fiti that day so we made the decision to push it back to July 23rd, hopefully everything will go smoothly.
Cultural differences have proven to be one of the largest challenges we face. Simple things that we would never have considered to be a problem are turning out to be the biggest road blocks. For example, we were promoting our event as a ‘music festival’ because we associated that with a complication of different musicians and artists playing for a large group of people. As it turns out, ‘festival’ means competition here and we had people asking us what the final prize would be. We were also informed that we needed to handout individual invitations to people, otherwise they would not attend. Unfortunately between the number of posters and invitations we have printed off, there is one less forest on this Earth. As a random side note, we were told to use porridge as glue for the posters –it’s like cement! I cannot imagine what it would do to your intestines. We are all hoping that everything will go as planned this week, but this is Africa, half the time you are left disappointed but the other half pleasantly surprised. Next week’s blog will hold the verdict…
Read More: http://kinleighheadseast.blogspot.com/2010/07/tia.html
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