By Oluwole Dada
In today’s article, more examples will be discussed to reinforce the point that consideration of the culture and taste of the people is critical for the success of any product.
What makes the Nigerian market particularly fascinating and particularly unforgiving for the brand manager who approaches it without adequate granularity is that cultural and taste differences are not just an international marketing problem. They are as well a domestic one. Nigeria is not a single consumer market wearing a single flag. It is a collection of over 250 ethnic nationalities, each with distinct food traditions, flavour preferences, and cultural values. The Hausa-Fulani consumer in Kano does not have the same taste profile as the Igbo consumer in Onitsha or the Yoruba consumer in Ibadan. These are not marginal differences. They are significant enough to determine whether a product succeeds or fails.
I have seen brands blame their regional sales teams for underperformance in markets where the product itself was the problem. The sales team in a Northern state being held accountable for the poor offtake of a product whose flavour profile was built for Southern palates. The disciplinary memos. The performance improvement plans. The sales targets maintained or increased despite the market’s clear and consistent signal that the product was not what the consumer in that region wanted. That signal was being sent from the shelf every day. The organisation was not listening to it.
When SAB Milller (later acquired by ABInBev) bought International Breweries in Ilesa, Nigeria, it ensured the product (Trophy) was for distribution in the Southwest part of Nigeria. The same organisation introduced Hero Beer in the Southeast part of Nigeria. Hero was designed in a manner that the can carried the Biafra flag and that made it a product that the locals saw as their own. The company was able to adapt the products to the culture of each region and that enabled them to ensure dominance of these brands in their respective regions.
In Nigeria, there are products that sell significantly better in the North than in the South. This isn’t because of distribution, not because of pricing, not because of marketing support, but because the product’s sensory profile matches the prevailing taste preference of the Northern consumer more closely than the Southern one. The reverse is equally true. A product built on a sweetness profile that resonates in Lagos may be received with indifference in Kano, where saltier, spicier flavour notes are more deeply embedded in the culinary tradition. This is not a problem. It is a market reality. The problem begins when organisations treat Nigeria as a single homogeneous consumer market and build a single product formulation to serve it.
I would like to share an experience that illustrates the above with painful precision. Snaps was a children’s snack product introduced into the Nigerian market by uac Foods many years ago. It was a product formulated in South Africa. On the surface, the logic appeared sound. The South African product was performing well in its home market. The Nigerian children’s snack segment was growing. The category opportunity was real. What the organisation did not interrogate with sufficient rigour was the fundamental sensory difference between the two markets it was treating as equivalent.
South African children’s snack preferences skew salty. Nigerian children’s snack preferences skew sweet. These are not minor calibrations around a common flavour centre. They are meaningfully different sensory profiles, shaped by years of cultural conditioning around what food is supposed to taste like, particularly food intended for children. When Snaps was launched, it was received with enthusiasm by the trade. This is where the first analytical error was made. Distribution acceptance was interpreted as consumer acceptance. The two are not the same thing. The distributor’s job is to move stock into the channel. The retailer’s job is to move stock onto the shelf. Neither of them is the end consumer.
In this case, neither of them was the product’s target user. The adults in the trade chain who sampled the product did not clock the salty profile as a problem, because their own palates were not calibrated to Nigerian children’s expectations. The consumer, the child, told the truth the moment the product was consumed. They did not like it. It did not match what they expected a snack to taste like. And so they did not come back for it. The repeat purchase rate, which is the truest measure of consumer acceptance for any fast-moving consumer good, was negligible.
Snaps was eventually discontinued. The product did not fail because the sales team failed. It failed because the consumer insight was wrong, the formulation was wrong for the market.
Oluwole Dada is the General Manager at SecureID Limited, Africa’s largest smart card manufacturing plant in Lagos, Nigeria.
