Dear Susan
Thanks for this interesting article. You say that Companies should not give or sell household technologies to NGOs and many would agree, but what could be the role of NGOs to reach the Bottom billion, the poorest? Until everyone has safely managed water supply, HWTS (Household Water Treatment and Safe storage) remains a very logic safe water solution, would you agree?
As you say, NGOs should not distort the market but their role could be to help governments with social marketing and create supply chains of a range of attractive treatment solutions so people can choose. For the real poor subsidies remain needed.
Regarding efficiency of HWTS, it is as you say. If an option is not used 100% of the time the effect is very low.
Regarding convincing a family to invest in HWTS health indeed is not an argument but peer pressure and status is.
For instance poor families in India put their filter in front of the house to show others they have a filter.
Regarding the question. ” Is household water treatment a failed strategy ?” I guess there are several answers possible.
Besides failures there is also stories like the water filters in Vietnam. The commercial sales there scales up by 200% per year (Roshini , WHO 2016) and also poor families buy filters of 15 to 25 US$. This success is probably due to the fact that people are used to boil water and that there now is a supply chain of affordable and attractive water filters.
Interesting studies on how to sell products to the BOP are on the website http://www.hystra.org
A good article on how to scale up safe water can be found at http://www.300in6.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Going-to-scale-with-safe-water_Urs-Heierli_Paul-Osborn.pdf
This article mentions the 5 Ps for marketing and in this case focussed on safe water systems
1 Product, (attractive, effective, to be trusted)
2 Price, ( affordable)
3 Place, ( supply chains, profit for each link in the chain)
4 Promotion ( Social marketing task of NGOs government, Commercial task of Companies)
5 People ( drinking safe water, use a treatment option should become social norm)
Susan, thanks again for bringing up this important issue and hope that your next article is about solutions for safe water
Regards
Henk Holtslag
smartcentregroup.org
It’s easy to forgive indecision when it comes to donating to a worthy cause in India. A bird’s eye view shows at least 3.3 million nonprofit organizations in...
Dear Susan
Thanks for this interesting article. You say that Companies should not give or sell household technologies to NGOs and many would agree, but what could be the role of NGOs to reach the Bottom billion, the poorest? Until everyone has safely managed water supply, HWTS (Household Water Treatment and Safe storage) remains a very logic safe water solution, would you agree?
As you say, NGOs should not distort the market but their role could be to help governments with social marketing and create supply chains of a range of attractive treatment solutions so people can choose. For the real poor subsidies remain needed.
Regarding efficiency of HWTS, it is as you say. If an option is not used 100% of the time the effect is very low.
Regarding convincing a family to invest in HWTS health indeed is not an argument but peer pressure and status is.
For instance poor families in India put their filter in front of the house to show others they have a filter.
Regarding the question. ” Is household water treatment a failed strategy ?” I guess there are several answers possible.
Besides failures there is also stories like the water filters in Vietnam. The commercial sales there scales up by 200% per year (Roshini , WHO 2016) and also poor families buy filters of 15 to 25 US$. This success is probably due to the fact that people are used to boil water and that there now is a supply chain of affordable and attractive water filters.
Interesting studies on how to sell products to the BOP are on the website http://www.hystra.org
A good article on how to scale up safe water can be found at
http://www.300in6.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Going-to-scale-with-safe-water_Urs-Heierli_Paul-Osborn.pdf
This article mentions the 5 Ps for marketing and in this case focussed on safe water systems
1 Product, (attractive, effective, to be trusted)
2 Price, ( affordable)
3 Place, ( supply chains, profit for each link in the chain)
4 Promotion ( Social marketing task of NGOs government, Commercial task of Companies)
5 People ( drinking safe water, use a treatment option should become social norm)
Susan, thanks again for bringing up this important issue and hope that your next article is about solutions for safe water
Regards
Henk Holtslag
smartcentregroup.org
Dear Henk – thank you so much for your thoughts on how to get the marketing of point of use water treatment right and these excellent resources. Susan