A mobile approach to collecting fishy data – a case study

Kenya
Sub-Saharan Africa
7. Nov 2017

Acquiring knowledge on how consumers make their daily decisions and how they experience services and products becomes a specifically tough challenge when you are dealing with hard-to-reach target audiences in emerging markets. This was the case for FoodTechAfrica*, a public-private partnership in need of identifying actionable trends in Kenyan fish consumption. TTC Mobile offered them a solution: our mobile survey sampling tool that specifically targets emerging markets. 

Our mobile survey sampling tool for inclusive business
TTC Mobile has found a solution for reaching out to the hard-to-reach target audiences, by developing a mobile survey sampling tool. We are now able to collect consumer insights in emerging markets and have experienced firsthand that unusual markets require a new approach. The mobile survey sampling tool captures tastes, preferences and opinions. The tool consists of a dedicated network of mobile partners to send SMS invites to mobile phone users and to transfer airtime incentives (prepaid top-up) to our panel members directly after survey completion. The platform is built to be agnostic as to what device or browser type panel members are using and members can reach the platform on both basic and smartphones. The surveys are always data-friendly and be easily sent out in areas with low bandwidth mobile Internet. To ensure our panel members are real and unique, we capture more than 20 data points; so-called digital fingerprinting.

Analyzing consumer trends to change the market

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Within the framework of partnership’s Monitoring and Evaluation activities, FoodTechAfrica collaborated with TTC Mobile to repeat an interview-based consumer study of 2013 and identify actionable trends. Within a week, our tool was capable of surveying almost 700 Kenyan consumers. The insights were very valuable for FoodTechAfrica, showing a drop in fish consumption between today and 2013. A significant drop was observed in the Kisumu area, a traditional fish eating area that borders Lake Victoria, which closely corresponds with recent media reports that said that wild catch from Lake Victoria is half of what it used to be. For FoodTechAfrica these insights help to understand consumer behavior better, which plays an important role in their plan to change the market. FoodTechAfrica aims to replace the consumption of wild catch, that has been suffering high drop rates, with consumption of sustainable farmed fish in Eastern Africa.

Turning towards mobile
The enormous potential of (internet-enabled) phones in the emerging markets of Africa, Asia and Latin America, has inspired TTC Mobile to turn towards mobile solutions. Most of the mobile growth on the planet is expected to come from emerging markets and mobile phones will account for almost one-tenth of African GDP by the end of the decade, as mobile broadband connections will triple in five years.

Besides being ubiquitous in emerging markets, mobile technology has several other advantages. As consumers are increasingly living their lives on mobile devices, mobile survey shave one of the highest response speeds and are better at engaging people than traditional survey methods. Above all, mobile surveys that are sent out through SMS are particularly good for including audiences that are demographically not well represented in traditional methods, for example audiences living in remote areas, whereas mobile voice messages serve the audiences that are illiterate.

 

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*FoodTechAfrica is a public-private partnership that combines the strength and expertise of 14 partners that are all active in the aquaculture value chain. The partnership is coordinated by Larive International and has been investing in East African aquaculture since 2013. The partners have created and put in place an approach towards creating a sustainable aquaculture sector, starting with the basics: feed, fingerlings, sustainable production systems and processing. Already in 2013, the partnership understood that the large potential of fish farming in Kenya as wild catch was dwindling and that fish prices were rising steadily. This development is a challenge to food security but at the same time an opportunity for local fish production, or aquaculture. Watch their explanimation here.

Don't miss this blog article about TTC's mobile survey sampling tool.

 

FoodTechAfrica. A Public Private Partnership for aquaculture in East Africa. from Larive International on Vimeo.

This blog is a part of the November 2017 series on data for inclusive business.

Read the full series for insights on how the data revolution could affect inclusive business. Will it bring an end to the uncertainty of business in Base of Pyramid markets? Can it straddle the development-business divide? Will the data drive spurred by the Sustainable Development Goals be useful to inclusive business?