Challenge
This project challenged Kantar to not only reach the lower socioeconomic groups that Diageo wanted to target, but also help in understanding the consumption of alcohol (local brew) that was illegal and therefore not uniform or branded.
In particular, we had to understand how to:
- Minimise underreporting of consumption, given the illegal nature of local brew.
- Reach a representative sample of lower socioeconomic drinkers, who were unlikely to accurately report their consumption and were more likely to be located in hard to reach rural location.
- Include an accurate list of local brews, when there was little previous data on this type of alcohol consumption.
Approach
We conducted n=3,000 face to face interviews among last 4 week (L4W) alcohol drinkers across Kenya (both urban and rural locations).
We worked in partnership with the client and our local Kantar office to ensure we included a comprehensive brand list in the questionnaire, as well as accurate information on serve type and serving sizes for local brew and branded alcohol.
We also implemented measures to eliminate potential bias by ensuring:
- Regional coverage was expanded to include areas where higher consumption of local brew had been observed/was hypothesised.
- Respondents were assured that the study was commissioned by a private company and NOT by a government body.
Insight
Consumers were drinking less illicit brew and were more open to branded alcohol as a result of a crackdown on illicit/local brew and general concerns about its safety.
This created an opportunity for affordable alternatives, such as Diageo’s Senator Keg. Senator was positioned particularly well to gain from local brew, as Senator and local brew had a few things in common:
- They attracted a similar profile of consumers
- They were both consumed with frequency
There was also untapped market potential, as a large pool of local brew drinkers were not currently drinking Senator (78% of Local Brew drinkers were not drinking Senator), despite being open to it.
Impact
The project was instrumental in driving Diageo’s growth agenda for Senator Keg, which resulted in +32% growth in net sales value (NSV) in F19.
In addition to growth in net sales volume, Senator also gained volume share, moving from 24% in June 2018 to 30% of the servings share for branded alcohol in Sept 2019.
As a result of the project, Diageo has also been successful in recruiting local brew drinkers. In 2017, only 22% of Local Brew drinkers said they drank Senator Keg. In 2019, 42% of Local Brew drinkers reported they drink Senator, a 91% increase in Senator consumption amongst local brew drinkers.