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Wednesday 23 May 2012

P&G

 

Procter & Gamble (P&G) East Africa is one of the smallest subsidiaries of the multi-national company. It has however diligently kept 200 million customers spread across sub- Saharan Africa satisfied and happy by consistently supplying them with its high quality range of products.

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Procter & Gamble             

Procter & Gamble, Kenya

It’s no gamble when 200 million customers are satisfied!

P&G is organized into three business units namely beauty, health and well-being and household care. The company boasts a wide product range that cuts across beauty, grooming, healthcare and snacks. In Kenya P&G has built an enormous base of loyal consumers to its diverse set of brands with catchy names such as Pampers diapers and Always sanitary pads which are all leading players in their categories.

 

It also provides Duracell batteries, Gillette shaving products, Oral B toothbrushes, Vicks Kingo lozenges and Ariel Washing Powder which was re-launched in the market recently. For consumers the combination represents, in its barest terms, the potential for getting most of the products they may need from the same company. Andrew Plastow, the P&G Country Manager, is happy to be part of the success, “We offer a variety of products and most of our brands are market leaders in their own niches, he says.

 

P&G brands such as Always and Pampers have been blended into Kenya’s national psyche and as a result have become an integral part of the country’s history, reflecting customers’ faith in quality products and resonating with their passion. Being mass brands, the products appeal to both the top end and low end consumers. Pampers is a market leader commanding about 70% of the diaper market in Kenya and is expected to perform even better as its popularity and consumption increase.

 

P&G is committed to the delivery of quality for its consumers, rewarding them for their loyalty and ensuring they get the best value for money. P&G believes the Kenyan market has potential for growth as customer preferences become more sophisticated and quality driven. With the attractive appearances of the Company’s products and consistency in quality, the brands’ volumes, market share and turnover are also expected to increase.

Heavy Investment

 

Plastow attributes P&G’s success in part to the Company’s substantial investment in human resource development, which he says has been shaping employees and preparing them to take up future roles in managing the firm’s affairs. “I’ve worked with the company for 12 years now in different positions, I started out small, but I’ve risen to the current position. There are several other individuals with similar stories, which is testimony to P&G’s strong emphasis on human resource development”.

 

With the growing economy and changing retail trends, the Company has been working hard to take its products to the consumer. Plastow says ensuring products are available in shelves is key to winning consumers. This calls for better distribution network (visible distribution.) P&G has a continuous strategy of taking services closer to the consumers to serve them better. The firm also ensures it meets the Kenya Bureau of Standard (KEBS) minimum standards for all products.

History: The Power of Purpose

P&G’s story started in 1837 when distinguished entrepreneurs William Procter and James Gamble formed a humble, but bold new enterprise. What began as a small, family-operated soap-and-candle company, has grown into a multinational and thrived, inspired hugely by P&G’s purpose of providing products and services of superior quality and value.

 

The power of P&G’s purpose is the one factor that has contributed to the company’s long heritage of growth. It first entered the East African market when it bought the Vicks Richardson Company, which was manufacturing Vicks lozenges, Vicks inhaler, Vicks Vaporub, Vicks Triangles and Vicks Kingo Lemon.

 

In 1992, it began an Always line to manufacture various variants of the brand.

Corporate Social Responsibility

 

P&G, in partnership with a local nongovernmental organisation (NGO), has provided approximately 3.2 million free sanitary pads to 15,000 girls from poor families in a project that ended in December 2008. Dubbed ‘Always Keeping Girls in School,’ the programme provided each girl from the target schools with free pads for every month in each school term. In addition, the girls also received education on issues of feminine hygiene, puberty and menstrual protection.

 

The programme whose immense effect was felt when enrolment of girls increased in both primary and secondary schools in the selected areas, targeted girls in their last two years of primary education in order to help them stay in school as they prepared for the final examinations.

 

The premise was that if the girls were able to stay in school and concentrate, they would be able to perform better and also compete on an almost equal platform with their boy counterparts. The programme is in line with Agenda Three of the Millennium Development Goals, which seeks to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education. The Company has recently expanded the Always Keeping Girls in School programme through a pilot with the Ministry of Education targeting 20,000 girls in over 200 schools. The Ministry of Education is using the pilot to collect data on the need for pads in schools.

 

P&G, through Population Services International (PSI) a social marketing NGO has a programme where they visit schools in areas with unsafe water sources to educate students on the importance of drinking purified water. They also provide them with free sachets of Pur, a low cost technology that purifies contaminated water, and a brochure to reinforce the message.

 

P&G has reached over 400,000 children with the free samples and education since the programme begun in 2007.