Is your business in Africa stuck in a rut? Do you spend the bulk of your time maintaining the current status quo or do you actively orchestrate the consumer’s future? The key to shaping the future is identifying what the consumer does not reveal and predicting how this will affect future purchase decisions. Strategic insight generation is an effective tool for orchestrating the consumer’s future and it is up to you to go for it. Africa is a continent full of rich and unique consumer insights waiting to be harnessed. Only those who harness these insights can play to win on the continent.
The good news is that there is a shortcut to help you improve your insight generation capabilities in a timely manner. The answer is Afritail, a blog created by Dr. Uchenna Uzo, Faculty Director of Lagos Business School. The blog is positioned to be the number one provider of weekly insights on retail, consumer, sales and marketing in Africa. August’s articles in Afritail provide practical advice to help you think more carefully about consumer engagement in Africa. In each article, you will find advice for retailers, salespeople, advertisers, marking managers, CEOs and other experts.
The first article discusses how African consumers are democratizing advertising through peer-to-peer product promotion without the support of advertising agencies. It explains how street vendors, open market retailers, market union leaders, door-to-door advertisers and village town criers who represent over 70% of Africa’s retailing activity play prominent roles in socializing product ideas and concepts. The article explains how organizations with lean budgets can engage creative democratizers to create highly engaging and cost-efficient advertisements to serve their target audiences.
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The second article highlights that Africa is a mobile first consumer market, offline and sachet economy. It investigates the future and predicts the characteristics of consumer marketing in Africa. The article concludes with tips on how marketers can repurpose skills and capabilities to create the future they wish to see.
The third article unlocks the secrets of emoji marketing in Africa. It explains how exploiting buyer emotions can have both positive and negative influences on customer purchase behaviour. The article concludes with recommendations on how brand managers and retailers harness positive emotions of buyers to secure purchase frequency and brand loyalty. The final article synthesizes previous insights and discusses five ways to maximize advertising spend in Africa.
The August articles in Afritail walk you through steps, tools and approaches for effective consumer engagement in Africa. You will get better at profiling influential consumers, building a network of creative consumers, setting realistic marketing goals, finding new ways to predict the future and gauging your progress in consumer engagement.
Dr. Uchenna Uzo, a Senior Lecturer of Marketing Management, a retail and consumer expert. He has received many awards for teaching excellence, including European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), and Academy of International Business (AIB) best teaching case awards among others. His research interest includes indigenous marketing practices, retail and consumer behaviour in Africa. Uchenna’s articles share insights on retailing, consumer behaviour and sales in Africa.
