Strategies and challenges in the marketing of condoms: a social marketing perspective by non-governmental organisations in Kenya

Abstract

This study was conducted over the period between, July 2001 and completed in July 2002. The study sought to establish the state of marketing of condoms in Kenya and specifically addressed the following three objectives: 1. To establish the types of condoms marketed in Kenya. 2. To identify the current strafegies used in Marketing Condoms in Kenya. 3. To determine the challenges faced in the marketing of condoms in Kenya. This topic was selected owing to the fact that this is a very current issue that has raised major concerns amongst Kenyans, on whether condoms should be marketed aggressively and how this should be done. The population of study included the NGOs, listed in the Directory of Non Governmental Organizations under reproductive health, which confirmed to be marketing condoms in Kenya. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data (See Appendix II), and below is a summary of the findings: To address the first objective, it was established that NGOs in Kenya are mainly marketing the male condoms. and the female condoms are seldom marketed. Very little marketing research is being done with regard to the consumer's wants and needs in order to meet their requirements. Only 25% of the sampled population indicated they have a marketing department, which perhaps explains the low usage of the commercial marketing strategies used to increase the effectiveness of social marketing. Program officers, or research managers, who did not have a good knowledge of how to apply the marketing concepts into social marketing, carried out most of the marketing functions. This led to one of the major recommendations made by this study, that future marketers of condoms need to consider having a marketing department, that would plan, implement and evaluate marketing strategies which hopefully should increase the usage of condoms in Kenya. The second objective established that various marketing strategies were adopted in Kenya. The most common were social marketing strategies, which included social and educational campaigns mainly the use of peer counseling. Others that were fairly common included print media materials such as pamphlets, posters and brochures. These have proved most effective in creating awareness and education on how to use condoms. The least common used strategies were product differentiation and pricing strategies. The findings indicated that these were limited owing to the fact that there is no condom production in Kenya at the moment, and the non profit making objective of NGOs hindered the application of most preferred pricing strategies. Perhaps the introduction of the proposed condom factory in Kenya will lead to the use of most of these strategies currently not in use. The third objective, sought to establish the major challenges facing condom marketing in Kenya. There were about fourteen challenges mentioned and these were weighted to measure their significance using percentages. The major challenges scoring 100% were social stigma associated with the use of condoms in Kenya, as many people associate them with immorality. There is serious opposition mainly from the religious circles that the government should not promote the use of condoms to reduce the spread of sexually transmitted diseases especially the killer AIDS/HIV. Most of the lobby groups opposing the use of condoms are advocating chastity and abstinence amongst the youth as the way forward on this subject. Despite all these controversies, marketers of condoms still have to face the challenge of how they will market condoms effectively to increase their use, given that so far, researchers have confirmed condoms to be most effective barrier method against sexually transmitted diseases.