Going into 2022, brands have to manage rising costs and consumers demand for affordability and quality.
The holiday season is now over, but coming into 2022, the pandemic continues to prevail with the Omicron variant still spreading rapidly through many African countries. Senegal in particular, has now seen another spike in daily case rates, with the highest being 584 cases on January 13th 2022, but is now slowly subsiding with 198 daily cases recorded on January 24th 2022. Coming into a new year, with an unconventional holiday season and uncertainty with regards to the pandemic; it is vital to track changes in consumer habits and behaviors, to ensure that businesses are staying ahead of the fast changing preferences/expectations of consumers in the current climate.
Our Kasi Insight tracker: Retail in Senegal - Consumer Basket Purchase Survey conducted in December of 2021, polled 413 respondents to reflect on their consumption practices as they move into the new year. Respondents were asked about their brand purchase decision drivers when buying regular grocery items. The findings provide valuable insight for brands looking to understand who their consumers are, and what they are looking for.
Price and Quality remain top concerns for consumers in Senegal.
Going into 2022, Senegalese consumers are looking for quality and affordability when choosing and deciding on a brand. In fact, 80% picked the quality of a product as the most important factor, followed by price with 72%. When it comes to factors that are not important in purchase decisions, familiarity with the brand and materials ingredients of the product are at the bottom of the list for consumers in Senegal.
Price and quality are top drivers of purchase when looking at age group, gender and income levels. The same is true for familiarity with the brand and materials/ingredients of the product.
When it comes to what type of products consumers bought: personal hygiene and cleaning products come on top – again confirming that consumers' behaviors and shopping patterns are still very much influenced by the pandemic.
Interestingly, consumers in Senegal also purchased some discretionary items such as clothing and shoes – which can be attributed to the holiday season and the celebrations that go with that period of the year.
Personal hygiene and food brands still drive the demand but it’s not all rosy.
The fact that consumers are still price and quality sensitive, in a period where supply chain disruption has created price inflation globally and in Africa. Inflation in Senegal is 2% a decrease of 0.44% compared to last year. These dynamics pose challenges for brands as they have to maintain margin (past the higher cost to consumers) but at the same time keep price and quality to meet the needs of consumers.
As the pandemic ends, and there are signs in other markets that we may have reached community immunity, inflation is expected to return to normal level and costs for brands will be expected to drop as well.
The current situation seems to be temporary but as we learn since the onset of the pandemic, things can change fast. It is important for brands to continuously monitor trends and get the real time data to stay ahead of the curve. It is true in Senegal but also across Africa.
Our data intelligence platform can help you track changes in consumer behaviors and shopping patterns across Senegal and other countries in Africa, providing you with valuable insights that can help you or your business make data-driven decisions, fast.
Contact our team today to explore how our consumer intelligence can empower your decision-making process. Win with confidence with Kasi insights https://www.kasiinsight.com/thehub
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