Meeting different needs

With expanding urban populations, rising incomes and high energy costs, what is the main priority as you see it for meeting the needs of urban consumers?

Developing affordable, convenient products for urban consumers is very important. Beans, for example, are a nutritious, popular staple but they are a slow-cooking food, which requires time and a lot of fuel. In Rwanda, they have had some experience in developing viable pre-cooked bean products that cook in less than 15 minutes, but this requires reliable production of appropriate bean varieties, effective marketing systems and competitive food products that are acceptable to consumers. We are now trying to do the same working with value chains partners in Kenya and Uganda.

How do you view the different needs of consumers and how can these needs be met through marketing and packaging?

We see that there are three different categories of urban consumers. There is the urban poor who need to have affordable food with low energy costs. Then there is the middle income group who want nutritious, value-added products that are easy to cook. Finally, you have the high income consumer who likes trendy, snack foods. To develop appropriate products, one has to determine consumer demand by assessing potential demand, package sizes and product prices. Our role in the pre-cooked bean value chain is to develop prototype products and packaging for market testing.

So how challenging is it to develop appropriate products to suit the needs of diverse consumers?

This is a new world that marketers are up against but it is a challenge we are embracing. The beauty of the challenge is that as much as consumers are diverse they have a lot in common. For instance, we all eat beans but we often eat beans very differently. Our job is to offer a range of products with a single core ingredient that is available in different pack sizes and sometimes even modify the branding to appeal to our different consumer groups.